Americana "last gasp" AM only transistor radio

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by ctc17

I thought it would be one of those one IC deals. They had those AM broadcast band all in one ICs that they would build in electronics classes/schools. We need a picture of the inside please.

On the sensitivity issue its most likely antenna. If it has one of those tiny ferrite rod deals that the issue. The better the radio the better the antenna.

Hook a long wire up to it and watch it go.

I have a belt-clip stereo FM scan radio that uses the headphone cord as an antenna, and it works fairly well in this area which is about 35-40 miles from the Cleveland FM stations (which do not transmit from the city, but are scattered around at least two southwestern suburbs; I'm near Lake Erie, some 30+ miles from downtown).

FM, and particularly stereo FM, are much more demanding when it comes to signal strength than AM ever was, so I'm really amazed that my little "Sonaki" stereo FM belt-clip receiver works as well as it does in this area with such a poor antenna. I haven't found a way, however, to hitch an external FM antenna to this radio (no external terminals that I can see); if I could, I'll bet I could get stations 70 miles away very easily, although they might well be crowded together if the radio had an actual tuning dial (it doesn't).

As to AM, I did not realize that the size of the ferrite loopstick antennas in portable radios mattered that much; after all, the loopsticks in 6-transistor portables aren't much longer than maybe four inches, if that much, and they seem to do a creditable job of picking up usable local signals in daytime, as well as DX at night (whatever the true definition of "AM DX" is in these days of the FCC's 750-mile nighttime coverage limits for former clear-channel AM stations). They can't be too long in the shirt-pocket portables because of the small size of the cabinets, but in most of them they extend almost the width of the latter. The only radios I've seen that can use really long loopsticks are full-size portables; the AM loopstick in my Sony TFM-7200W AM/FM 3-volt portable, for example, must be at least six inches long and maybe longer, as the radio is a good-sized portable from the early 1970s.