XM question

I've had a hand-held XM unit for about 2 1/2 years now and it's recently started acting up when I plug it into the car cradle. It will work just fine for a while, then cut out completely, indicating either that the antenna is the problem or it's not receiving a signal.

If I take it out of the cradle, everything works fine again (I usually have to attach the little cigar-shaped antenna and hang it from the rear-view mirror). That isn't much of a hassle, but the battery will run down after a couple of hours if it's not plugged in. Having to put it back in the cradle to charge up pretty much sucks on some of the extremely long trips I get to make.

This isn't a matter of the signal being blocked by buildings or mountains; this happens when I'm driving across the flat emptiness that is rural West Texas.

I don't know if it's a matter of temperature (it seems to cut out after the car gets good and warm) or if the jostling of driving 70 mph causes something to come loose.

Everything is fine when I plug it into the cradle at home.

If it is just a matter of maintaining a good connection, is there any way to clean the cradle and/or XM unit to assure that?

Any help is appreciated. (And let's not turn this into a Sirius vs. XM pissing match; I went with XM for baseball.)

 

It could be the antenna cable, they do fray after some time.
The fact that it works OK at home says the radio itself is OK.
I would also post this on www.xmfan.com, go to the hardware discussion area.