Quote:
Originally Posted by jr_tech
While it may be fun and nostalgic to attempt serious DXing with small vintage analog-dial tube-type table models, I suspect that you need a bit more selectivity and sensitivity than these sets can provide. Have you attempted AM DXing with your ICOM IC-725?... it should be quite a good performer! 
Pip, the DX cat says that ICOMS are purrrrrty good!
jr
This station list might be helpful:
http://www.ac6v.com/clearam.php
Happy DXn! |
My DXing days ended when I moved into an apartment 12 years ago. There is no way I can put up a decent antenna -- for AM, FM, TV, amateur radio or anything else -- in an apartment building (lease restrictions). I cannot use my Icom ham rig anymore for the same reason, so I put it in a box and forgot about it.
BTW, even when I had a decent antenna for HF and broadcast at the house where I used to live, I never heard any AM radio stations from Florida or anyplace else (except the Atlanta, Georgia area) in the southern United States, let alone the Southwest or the West Coast. The closest I ever came to hearing AM radio from the Southwest was when I received a 50kW station from Dallas, and one Sunday night when I heard KOA-AM radio in Denver, the latter after a local Cleveland station had signed off for technical maintenance. I don't remember what radio I heard the Dallas station on, but the Denver station was received on the AM tuner of a Zenith integrated 4-mode stereo system I owned at the time (1980s). Both radios had indoor antennas.
I think my DXing days are over as well because of the noise level in this apartment building. I often hear a loud noise on the AM broadcast band at certain points that sounds like the horizontal oscillator in old (pre-digital) TVs, that masks any stations I may otherwise be able to hear on those frequencies. This building has twelve units, every one of them occupied, so my hands are tied -- I can't tell people not to watch TV just so I can hear a few distant AM radio stations. (They probably wouldn't understand anyway.)
Finally, I realize my DXing problems would be solved if I moved into a house far away from any source of interference, but that too is out of the question (very long story and off-topic).