That sir, is the definition of sattellitte radio. You must have a line of sight to a satellitte. Same as your Skydock or a PnP unit. No repeater, line of sight. I find the SL2, with headphone works as well as any satrad in the same situation (obviously XM and Sirius have different dropout zones).
In my opinion the built in antenna and/or the headphone antenna doesn't work as well as the antenna plugged into a car/home dock or boombox, so don't even try to compare the two they aren't even in the same ball park. We've discussed this a while now and it seems those that mainly use this setup are those in areas with repeaters. The few folks that I seen reply to various discussion on this all said what I do that it just doesn't work very well in areas without a repeater!
The only thing that might remotely change my mine is this new sat that Sirius has put up, but considering that XM already had this type sat and I had tested the XMP3's setup and once again found it spotty at best.
If you got it to work so well, then just know I am happy for you, but that simply is not my experience! When I tested these things I literally had to hold my head in a certain direction and GOD forbid if there was the slightest thing in the way because you could forget it. Even walking my dog as a test which I did do, as I would pass from one area to another where there was any kind of tree or limb not even overhead, but off in the distance but in the line of sight BAM, no signal. I just can't say these things are reliable for portable use unless you stand in one freaking spot and that Sir defeats the whole purpose of being portable! LOL
Honestly I don't see any point in continue to beat this dead horse, my opinion isn't going to change! Clearly we disagree and so lets just leave it there!