MW Reception and Equipment Questions

[eriepascannist]

Before I ask I want to appologize if this isn't the right forum for my question, I think it is. I have recently taken an interest in MW dxing and have gotten a ton of "clear channels" in just about 6-8 total hours of band-searching. Now that I know I want to really get into the hobby, I'm not sure what sort of radio and antenna I will need. I've been using a simple Dollar store-type alarm clock radio and it does remarkably well considering, but I want a little more. Not looking for a 5000 foot longwire and a radio with 200 buttons on it, but just something simple yet effective. I've done some searching and longwires and loops both seem quite popular, but I'm not sure where I can either get one of these or how to build one. If this would be a better thing to go about doing step by step via PM, that's fine as well.

As a side note, as long as I started this thread, I had another question: what are the meteorological effects on MW dx? With FM sigs on a scanner, the clear, calm conditions are the best, and precip, wind or clouds reduces reception distance and clarity. Is it the same with MW, or do these sigs react differently to such conditions than FM VHF/UHF ones do? My biggest concern about that is that for the winter MW season, we get a lot of snowy, windy weather, clear skies are a rarity. I am curious how much those types of conditions affect the DX'ing conditions. (I'll try it out and see, obviously, but I was looking for a little "sneak-peek" into what things might be like.)

I'm sure these questions have been asked before, but I searched and couldn't find any. I'm just really fascinated with the whole thing and can't wait to get into the hobby more. I haven't even turned my scanner on in the evening for a couple weeks now... I must have MW fever!

 

[TassieJay]

I love DXing on the cheap, and have a Degen / Kaito 1103 ($70-80) by the bedside table. A Tecsun AN200 loop antenna ($20-30) goes with it - together they are a pretty reasonable combination, where I'm able to occasionally dig out trans-Pacific AM broadcast stations; stations 2000 miles distant are regular catches.
The Redsun RP2100 is also a pretty capable performer too, better audio than the 1103, and very sensitive too - but needs modification with a more narrow filter to make them suitable for some real serious DXing. The wide filter in them is ridiculously wide!

No matter what receiver you go for, there are some common factors that affect all of them.
Suburban noise is the bane of MW DXers. That is why I love the portables: you can take them for a walk to the park and get away from the noise a bit.
With so many stations cramming the AM band, a selective receiver is a must.
Meteorological effects? Well, the main one is lightning. Lightning storms within 500 miles of you, especially if in the direction of the station you're trying to listen to, can make things very hard to hear. Winter generally offers lower noise than summer, and 'surfing the greyline' during the equinox periods opens up some interesting opportunities.

 

[eriepascannist]

I love DXing on the cheap, and have a Degen / Kaito 1103 ($70-80) by the bedside table. A Tecsun AN200 loop antenna ($20-30) goes with it - together they are a pretty reasonable combination, where I'm able to occasionally dig out trans-Pacific AM broadcast stations; stations 2000 miles distant are regular catches.
The Redsun RP2100 is also a pretty capable performer too, better audio than the 1103, and very sensitive too - but needs modification with a more narrow filter to make them suitable for some real serious DXing. The wide filter in them is ridiculously wide!

No matter what receiver you go for, there are some common factors that affect all of them.
Suburban noise is the bane of MW DXers. That is why I love the portables: you can take them for a walk to the park and get away from the noise a bit.
With so many stations cramming the AM band, a selective receiver is a must.
Meteorological effects? Well, the main one is lightning. Lightning storms within 500 miles of you, especially if in the direction of the station you're trying to listen to, can make things very hard to hear. Winter generally offers lower noise than summer, and 'surfing the greyline' during the equinox periods opens up some interesting opportunities.

Trans-Pacific DX for only around $100? Pretty good! I agree that I want to stay with the cheap stuff, as it gives you more of a challenge. Sure, it would be great to hear, say, WWL nightly, but then what's the fun in the hobby?

Urban noise generators are not really an issue out here at night as I'm quite out in the country. Noise is actually very low at night, so if I can't pick out a station's call it's almost always because there are too many interfering stations. However, with the alarm clock ther'es really no way to null any undesired x-missions, which is one of the biggest reasons I wanted something better.

Thanks also for the answer to my other question. I knew lightning was an enemy to an MW DX'er, but do clouds alone have any impact? Wind is one of my biggest enemies on FM so is that true in MW as well?

Anyone else with thoughts on receivers? I see the name Grundig comes up on here a lot... what's the basics on them?

 

[ka3jjz]

Clouds have very little impact on MW DX, neither does wind - with one exception. During the winter, if the wind starts whipping the snow around, enough static electricity can be built up to make an otherwise quiet night full of noise.

Actually the higher in freq (MW too) you go, the more it starts to obey the usual laws of propagation on HF - during the day, the D layer absorbs much of the signal, at night the F layer starts reflecting.

As for receivers, this is one area where selectivity (the ability to separate one signal from another) is certainly king. While I don't do MW DXing, I can tell you that there are plenty of reviews to be found, and clubs like the National Radio Club (NRC) and the International Radio Club of America (IRCA) are places to find opinions on how well a radio works for MW DX. These clubs, combined, have almost a century (yes you read that right) of background on the subject - so if you really want to learn, these are the best places to do it. These 2 clubs are well respected in the hobby.

Here are 2 articles from our wiki that will help - and the links for the NRC and the IRCA are also there. I understand they even have a chat area. Lots of other stuff here, too...

MW DXing and Broadcasting - The RadioReference Wiki

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Category:Receiver_Reviews

HTH...Mike

 

[eriepascannist]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE, BrailleNote))

Thank you, Mike, for the great resources! DX'ing tonight and it was windy, and as you said the impacts were noticeable, but not obstructive. I never thought about the static electricity with snow.

I will check out those links and see what I can find. Thanks again!

 

[k9rzz]

There was an article written a number of years ago on tips to improve your AM log totals. I'll try to find it. Off the top of my head:

- Use the nulls in the built in loop antenna to null stations and try to hear what's under.
- If you always listen in the evening, try listening at sunset, or sunrise as well. Not to mention during the day!
- Now that school is back in session, listen for friday night HS football games. Stations will often run their higher daytime power until the game is over.
- Check your regular loud stations for unexpected down time. Especially after severe storms when stations may have power or antenna failures.

Last year, one of my BIG POWER stations had a power failure at the transmitter as well as their emergency generator. Too bad I learned of this well after they got a rental in there. Darn!

 

[ridgescan]

My own experience here is that weather has NO effect, only time of day. But that's here in Ca so ka3jjz's advice notwithstanding.
You know what you'd love? A CCrane twin coil "Justice" active AM antenna. I own one. Even tho I do 98% of my long distance DXing MW off the roof antenna, now&then I settle into an easy chair out in my livingroom where there's a '74 Sony table radio with an inductively coupled "justice" antenna running off it. This thing will make your existing radios do at least twice what they're doing.
I shot a quikie for ya just now so you can see how effective it is! The element is in the kitchen where there's a nice null spot-there are high power utility/cable lines running past about 12' outside that window lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7btsYP3zZYQ&feature=youtu.be

 

[eriepascannist]

Nice tips, K9. I never thought of the HS football games- probably pretty easy ID on those as well. Gotta be better than MLB season, when every other station simply ID's as "ESPN Radio" and nothing else, and the commercials are generic and national. I'd love the article if you find it.

Ridgescan, great setup! I guess what I'm starting to understand is that you can still do some rockin DX even without the huge antennas and such... I actually would like one of those. In the summertime it's nice to sit out on the deck and just turn the dial- looks like there's a lot of ways to go with this.

You often make some really great DX's on here- are those with your roof antenna? What radio? I'm sure that setup is a lot bigger than I would want to go but I'm just curious. Lots of radios listed in your signature...

 

[corbintechboy]

I do some MWDX. I use my outside wire and the QX loop. The QX loop is not cheap though but I would consider it well worth the money. I have an 100 foot balanced wire outside that does a really good job on MW. But the loop allows nulls and that is a great thing.

I have yet to make a video as my listening location is a bit dark and my cameras have a hard time in those conditions. I will however add that my Kaito 1103 is very good on MW, even on the loop. Out the box it wants to keep the internal rod connected when and external antenna is hooked up. However there is a little firmware trick that makes the radio think it is on HF all the way down the band and disables the internal stick. This makes it a very good cheap radio for catching the channels.

If you are serious I would not discount a decent desktop receiver. Any small radio is going to have limits on what it can do due to the limits of the beast. Overloading is always an issue on a portable and even my 1103 exhibits this behavior. My R75 is turning out to become rather worthy on MW and does not have the same overloading issue.

The hobby is a bug. If you love doing it you will find you will buy something and just want better. It will bite you and once bitten it gets fun. I like to recommend just starting out with the best you can afford. This gives you tools to dig out what you want and does not keep you wanting more. It lets you grow into the hobby instead the radio holding you back. Now this does depend on your spending comfort. Better to save a couple months and want nothing then to jump on an 80 dollar radio and feel you want so much more.

Nothing can beat my R75 for ECSS in a portable, I even believe any radio would have a hard time rivaling this radio. Bit of ECSS and a little tweaking of the dual PBT and this thing can pull them in. Stable as a rock and a portable cannot claim this. The E1 would come close but nowhere near the utility.

 

[ridgescan]

+1 on corbintechboy
and the vast majority of my DXs are with the r71a to a 100' wire @40' configured as a horizontal "L". I recently bought a PAR EF-SWL antenna and applied its transformer block to my antenna which gives it much stronger MW reception than before.
That CCrane unit will give me as much DX as that roof antenna. I strongly recommend it for your hobby

 

[kb2vxa]

I don't know which of today's receivers would best suit you but there are still a few "boat anchors" around that will amaze you. For example, we shipped enough RCA R-88s to the Bletchley Park UK monitoring station to sink a battleship and having restored two R-390s and used them I can say they're the best AM/CW receivers I've EVER heard. Just don't try to move them unless you're a weight lifter or have a forklift handy. (;->) Just a small step down are the lighter 3 Hs, Hallicrafters, Heathkit and Hammerlund and of course others, I just happen to like real radios that glow in the dark and make a nice warm spot for the cat.

Unless you're tuning VLF you don't need a 5000 foot long wire. (;->) For many years of SWLing a 50 foot wire strung through trees in the back yard worked nicely.

When it comes to static I personally never had a problem with snow blowing around but I did notice occasional slight frying during snowfall as snowflakes carry minute static charge. Now I said slight, barely noticeable so it never put off a night of MW DXing. Winter is the best time of year because lightning is too far away to hear as a general rule although EMP spikes can travel thousands of miles. Summer is rather nasty because of all the static crashes, propagation is unaffected but the noise floor is high.

What started me was my old 5 tube table radio when I was a kid looking for stations to listen to. After nightfall all these far away stations came in each with its own home town flavor (you won't hear THAT anymore with cookie cutter radio) and the bug bit, I've had RF ever since. Yeah, Radio Fever!

 

[ridgescan]

I don't know which of today's receivers would best suit you but there are still a few "boat anchors" around that will amaze you. For example, we shipped enough RCA R-88s to the Bletchley Park UK monitoring station to sink a battleship and having restored two R-390s and used them I can say they're the best AM/CW receivers I've EVER heard. Just don't try to move them unless you're a weight lifter or have a forklift handy. (;->) Just a small step down are the lighter 3 Hs, Hallicrafters, Heathkit and Hammerlund and of course others, I just happen to like real radios that glow in the dark and make a nice warm spot for the cat.

Unless you're tuning VLF you don't need a 5000 foot long wire. (;->) For many years of SWLing a 50 foot wire strung through trees in the back yard worked nicely.

When it comes to static I personally never had a problem with snow blowing around but I did notice occasional slight frying during snowfall as snowflakes carry minute static charge. Now I said slight, barely noticeable so it never put off a night of MW DXing. Winter is the best time of year because lightning is too far away to hear as a general rule although EMP spikes can travel thousands of miles. Summer is rather nasty because of all the static crashes, propagation is unaffected but the noise floor is high.

What started me was my old 5 tube table radio when I was a kid looking for stations to listen to. After nightfall all these far away stations came in each with its own home town flavor (you won't hear THAT anymore with cookie cutter radio) and the bug bit, I've had RF ever since. Yeah, Radio Fever!

I'm that hippie kid in the Allstate commercial telling you (the prim business guy) "...it's like we're connected" and you go "no we're not!" and I give you that look lol but in some way we all are connected that way here Warren and you're one of the "godfathers"
BTW my boatanchor does do some fine MWDX with the doubling as a space heater and all I am thinking it may go bedside soon for the nightcap DX-that's really how these radios should be run

 

[majoco]

Ridgescan said:

I recently bought a PAR EF-SWL antenna and applied its transformer block to my antenna which gives it much stronger MW reception than before.

Jeez. Ridgy, that's an awful expensive way to buy a $5 matching transformer! :roll:

 

[ridgescan]

Ridgescan said:


Jeez. Ridgy, that's an awful expensive way to buy a $5 matching transformer! :roll:

Yeah as it turned out you're absolutely right Marty but that's the way it wound up-eliminating their wire and sticking with mine. It makes signals much stronger though so sort of worth it. Where could I have gotten one of those $5 jobbies anyway?

 

[majoco]

Make it yourself!
Here's all the info...
http://home.comcast.net/~markwa1ion/exaol2/z_transformers.pdf
...in quite easy-to-understand terms. I made mine in a salvaged TV antenna 300-to-75ohm box - just rip out the old ferrite figure-8 coil core as it's frequency characteristics are all wrong for BC and HF. Then I used the original hardware to attach the antenna leads and the coax. I sealed the end of the coax with heat shrink and self-healing tape but made no attempt to waterproof it. Rain gets in, it just drains out through the holes in the bottom!

 

[ridgescan]

Make it yourself!
Here's all the info...
http://home.comcast.net/~markwa1ion/exaol2/z_transformers.pdf
...in quite easy-to-understand terms. I made mine in a salvaged TV antenna 300-to-75ohm box - just rip out the old ferrite figure-8 coil core as it's frequency characteristics are all wrong for BC and HF. Then I used the original hardware to attach the antenna leads and the coax. I sealed the end of the coax with heat shrink and self-healing tape but made no attempt to waterproof it. Rain gets in, it just drains out through the holes in the bottom!

Thanks for the link-I may just do that one.

 

[corbintechboy]

Did a little recording with my crappy camera. R75 on my QX loop:
Icom R75 test with the QX Loop - YouTube

 

[kb2vxa]

Ridge, I hate to tell you that straight arrow on the Allstink commercial could be my son and the kid, I ain't your pappy I'm your granpaw! Every time you drive in an earthing rod remember me, I invented dirt. Yup, I'm godfather to my cousin Karen so you may address me as don.

Yeah, the R-390 sure IS a space heater but the cat won't like it, I never saw one in a cabinet and the one I operated was rack mounted. One thing those beasts had over modern receivers was the antenna input configuration and tuned RF amp. No such thing as intermod from out of band signals, input selectivity eliminated them. Then there was that lovely antenna trimmer knob you peaked for maximum signal. That matched impedance from roughly 40 to 600 ohms so you could hook up an antenna without any special consideration like that ferrite transformer. You didn't need a balun either, they had balanced/unbalanced inputs so open wire ladder line, single wire or coax could be used.

While these classics were made for the radio shack (not that lifeless retail store) others were made for the living room. That's when families sat around listening and looking at the radio, but I wonder if they ever realized the radio was looking back at them.

 

[eriepascannist]

Sorry I haven't had the focus lately on this project and that I haven't been getting back to you guys. School's startin up again and that starts to take over all parts of your day. I'll try to look into it more this weekend but I truly do appreciate all the recommendations.

I'm really clueless as to what exactly I'll need for a longwire-type antenna... are there any good sites or videos out there that explain it? I think I'll start out with one of the above recommended antennas but who knows... I might want to move up sometime soon.

I'll get back to ya this weekend.

 

[w2xq]

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Back in the days of my Hammarlunds, I prefered to turn off the AGC and ride the RF gain. Espeecially on the graveyard channels, the signals levels change too rapidly for even the fast attack setting. Add the distortion induced from subaudible hetrodynes from unreadble stations in the noise level, nasty. Without AGC different stations float to the top and the audio would be crystal clear. One of my better graveyard catches was a Washington state 250w station on 1450 kc.

As far as seasons are concerned, I liked the fall equinox for minimal t-storm noise in both North and Latin America. Our winter would have peak t-storm noise out of Argentina and Brazil.

But the thing I miss the most are the wonderful Monday morning silent periods... sigh.