1958 Zenith De-luxe Royal 500H Radio

[vortalexfan]

Hello everyone, a few years ago I had bought a 1958 Zenith De-Luxe Royal 500H 8 Transistor AM Radio that when I first got it, it was not in very good shape, I had since then cleaned up the "Nylon" case, cleaned and polished the speaker grill, and recapped and re-aligned the radio and now the radio works really well now, last night I was actually picking up WBAP 820 AM out of Dallas, Texas which is 1,049 Miles from where I live in Elkhart, Indiana, which is crazy because none of my other radios have gotten stations that far away in.

In fact I'm listening to it right now and for it being a portable transistor radio it sounds almost like I'm listening to a full size radio the sound is that good on it.

[zeno]

I would guess it works better because its a TRF ( Tuned RF) radio.
There is an extra RF amp stage to tune & boost the signal. All
AM radios should be made that way. Only costs a few bucks to
add it.

73 Zeno
LFOD !

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by zeno

I would guess it works better because its a TRF ( Tuned RF) radio.
There is an extra RF amp stage to tune & boost the signal. All
AM radios should be made that way. Only costs a few bucks to
add it.

73 Zeno
LFOD !

Interesting, I didn't know that a Superhet radio could also function as a TRF set...

[zeno]

TRF can have another meaning. Yours is a superhet with
RF amp stage before the mixer / osc. Usually top left in schematics.

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by zeno

TRF can have another meaning. Yours is a superhet with
RF amp stage before the mixer / osc. Usually top left in schematics.

Yeah, I realized that after I got to work last night.

So how is it that this radio is able to get better reception than my Trans-Oceanic which also has a RF section as well?