aerial

[aceifty]

Is there anyway that the can get the aerial to stay down while playing cd's/dvd's and go up when I'm listening to the radio.

[Grrrmachine]

Not unless you install your own switch, no.

[Brianmoooore]

Not unless you install your own switch, no.

Which isn't difficult! There should be a parallel twin wire behind the glovebox, comprising a plain red wire and a plain white wire. The red wire should go to the accessories socket, and the white wire to the radio wiring.
All you need to do is add a switch in series with the white wire, if you want it to remain automatic when listening to the radio, or disconnect it from the radio wiring completely, and add a switch between the red wire and the white wire if you want only manual control. Switch can be a spare demister switch with the logo polished off, and fitted in one of the spare positions.

[aceifty]

Thanks guys ill give it a go

[darkchild]

My aerial stays down whilst listening to CDs if I've got the traffic announcements/updates turned off on the radio.

[Brianmoooore]

It'll depend on the sophistication of the radio in question. Radios from the E30 era just took the control output from immediately after the on/off switch, but there's no reason why later stuff shouldn't have been designed to be a bit more selective as to when to power the aerial.

[aceifty]

My aerial stays down whilst listening to CDs if I've got the traffic announcements/updates turned off on the radio.

I'll try this first, I'm sure I can turn the traffic updates off

[polsta]

I made a Mod myself

Get an e30 fog light switch , put the aerial "remote" wire going to the head unit through the switch , I also had a sub box , again put the remote wire going through the switch

With the switch being mounted in the spare place in the dash next to the hazzard switch etc, so it looked oem

The infamous aerial and sub box could then be turned on/off at the push of a button, and both were handy to have

Easy to do takes 5 minutes