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.

[radioactive]

i dont know if this has been brought up yet(too lazy to look) but if you want to dx the am broadcast band and dont have a decent am tuner or antenna i suggest using your car radio they're usally made to better specs (for cancelling out noise anyways)give it a shot especailly after sunset and report back here pronto

[radioactive]

. 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.


sounds like a all to common problem.most mfg of tuners that included am rarely paid attention to that band.there is a few like the philips ah673 that with a good signal can actually provide something worth listening to.my tu9900 is not too bad either for am but when push comes to shove i haul out my tube communication receivers that seem to pull the signals out of the mud when i want to do some serious dx'ing.

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.

what your experiencing is imaging and is a indactor or the receiver to reject them.

[majoco]

Nolan Woodbury said:

I think a lot of the answer is found in the various set-ups of verious radios. With the Superhet formula (antenna, r.f. amp, converter, i.f amp, detector, a.f amp then loudspeaker) signals are boosted to pretty sensitive levels. I'm not quite sure how it's done with solid state.

A superhet is a superhet - it doesn't matter whether it's hollow state or solid state! A single tube has possibly more gain than a single transistor, hence common mantle radios for local stations may have only needed 4 tubes in the radio circuit, where most SS radios had 6 transistors of which 3 were in the audio stages! Now that we have radios with hundreds of transistors in only three or four integrated circuits, it's possible to build digital display phase locked all-frequency super-sensitive radios for less cost than ever before.

Mind you, I would still like to see a shoot-out between a R390A against a WJ HF1000 on sheer performance, not the bells and whistles.

Best wishes for 2009 to everybody.