What's the longest distance you've been able to pull in a station?

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

I remember reading back about 10 yrs or so ago that on a lot of the "primo" solid state communication receivers MW was deliberately de-sensitised.

The AM (MW) sections of most AM/FM receivers made in the last 30 years or so are not worth a hill of beans; that is, they may work well enough for local reception in close-in areas such as the near suburbs of major cities (or in the cities themselves), but any real distance from anything other than 50kW stations, forget it. Case in point: In the '80s, I had a Zenith four-mode integrated stereo system with an FM section which pulled in every major Cleveland station in stereo just fine, using just the line cord antenna (I lived about 15 miles closer to Cleveland at the time). The AM reception, however, left an awful lot to be desired. During daylight hours I could get most of the major Cleveland AMs, but at night all but the big 50kW stations were all but inaudible. On top of that, the AM section in my stereo was, IMHO, so poorly designed that I was hearing shortwave at certain points on the AM dial after dark. The AM tuner in my present stereo system (Aiwa 200-watt bookshelf system) isn't much better, and the FM tuner isn't much good either in this signal area some 30-40 miles southwest of the Cleveland FMs (I have a powered indoor "tower" antenna hooked up to it). I live about five miles from a 1kW (0.5kW or 500 watts nights) AM station that will appear at two points on the dial on my system's tuner, 0.9 MHz or 900 kHz apart--560 and 1460 kHz, the latter being the station's fundamental (assigned) frequency. Doesn't bother me, especially (or at all), as I don't listen to AM that much anyhow.