New Shortwave listener

[Grundigguy]

Hi folks,

totally new hear "just" a listener with a few newby questions...


I bought a Grundig G6 "Buzz Aldrin Edition" radio. I'm 50 years old - [ the nostalgia was too strong]. Folks - this is one of the best radios I've ever owned! The little package is a blast. I live in Connecticut and there is plenty I've heard already. Ham operators on Long Island chatting with a guy in Chicago and other locales. On the AIR frequencies I looked up tower and ground frequencies online and can hear rather clearly the local airport 5 miles away with aircraft "10 miles to the east" of the airport being a common thing. Typically I'll scroll through the other bands picking up spanish speaking stations, some sound Russian or Czek. Many religious programs. Its pretty wild scanning through the hiss and such and picking out these seemingly obscure things. I've managed to hear traffic from an airport 20 miles to the SW.

Alas, I have a few questions...

Its common to hear folks flying cessna, diamonds and I believe lear jets. Is it possible to get airliners overhead? I should mention I am about 65 miles from Kennedy Airport. Just how far can I hear traffic be it tower or aircraft anyway?

There's a little jack on the side for an add-on antenna. It looks like a headphone jack but its marked for antenna. Just whats best for this little guy and would it help my shortwave/air listening? How far can I take the antenna thing for this modest unit?

Is the shortwave/air antenna built in like the AM radio antenna it has built in or is the long extendable for shortwave and AIR too?

I tried to get airliner traffic and made sure the frequencies were correct. Am I asking too much of this little black box? Laguardia and Kennedy are 65 miles approxiamtely.

What is the range for this radio for that kind of stuff?

All in all, this is one phenomenal little piece of work. I've learned the wisdom seeking out stations not randomly so much but knowing the frequencies increases success big time - where applicable.

Thanks in advance!!

Pete

PS: SW and Air and the like is battery only. The AC adapter throws too much static up - any suggestions?

 

[ka3jjz]

Hi Pete - let's see if we can't answer some of your questions...

It is certainly possible to hear the airliners going over head - probably out to a mile or two, depending on your terrain on a simple whip - but you're way out of range to hear Kennedy. What you are more likely seeing are aircraft on an approach or departure vector to/from either Kennedy or as an outside possibility, Logan. Therefore those are the frequencies I would concentrate on. The folks in the Conn. forum, or the aircraft forum may be of more use to you than I would - it's been 25 years since I lived in New England (lived in Mass. for awhile...). There's also the excellent Scan New England website run by Scott Halligen - as it concentrates in New England, your chances are also very high that you will get more information.

Whether that little jack on the side is set up for VHF aircraft, I have no clue. That's an owner's manual question. I suspect the whip is set up to feed both the HF and VHF sections of the portable. However, for HF, I would be very cautious about putting too much antenna on it. 2 reviews I have seen say the radio is already very sensitive - too much antenna might cause overloading, which you would immediately recognize if you start hearing HF stations in places they don't belong. 10 or 20 foot of wire tops, or perhaps one of the inexpensive active loops - the advantage of the loop is that it rejects certain kinds of noise, something working inside is far too easy to have occur.

If you haven't registered your warranty for the radio, do so. Eton had a number of issues with a bad wall wart causing noise with their top of the line E1 - so perhaps these problems are also rising up with the G6. Not out of the question. You're better off on batteries for the moment anyway - it isolates you from the possibility of getting some noise and other junk from the AC line in any case.

I wouldn't doubt that there is a Yahoo group set up for the G6 - often this is a great place to get tips on a radio you may not find anywhere else - including issues with the wall wart.

Please fire back with any other questions you might have 73 Mike

 

[ERICMYERS]

I have this radio. It will overload easily with an external antenna, but you should play around with a few. I work mine with a few random length longwires that I built (cheap and fun) and also with a windup longwire that I bought at RS on clearance. The loops have mixed reviews, but for no more than they cost, worth a try.

Overload, yes. The longwires help some places more than others as you would expect. Overall, overload or not, the external antennas really help. I find that for digging weak frequencies out of the noise, an earphone works wonders...the speaker is pretty noisy.

This is a fun radio for the money. You can easily work 30 or 50 countries with good conditions and a list to work from. Monitoring Times magazine lists lots of SW stations by GMT and target zone that gives you a massive headstart on finding stuff.

 

[ka3jjz]

Unfortunately RadioIntel has been taken over, and all those useful mods were dropped, but there was something for the ICF2010 that should work just as well on the G6. It consisted, I think, of a small box, a pot and one or two other items (quite easy to build) that you could put on a wire to limit the overloading by reducing the gain somewhat. I suspect that the G6 Yahoo group would probably have something on this by now, given that this radio has such a hot front end. 73 Mike

 

[nanZor]

I got a chance to play with a friend's G6 "Aviator" for a few days.

The biggest letdown was that while the aircraft AM audio sounded good, there is NO squelch! That was maddening. Even a fixed-squelch position would have been welcome for spot-monitoring but no.

I too suffered from the bleed-through of a strong FM station on many of the aircraft frequencies. I could have even dealt with that on the frequencies I'm interested in that aren't being swamped by the FM station, but the lack of any sort of squelch makes this unit tiring to listen to for aircraft - even with the good AM fidelity.

I thought that the 55mhz or so first IF would help on this dual-conversion unit, so I was surprised to hear so much bleed-over. Either they use a different conversion in the aircraft band, or the circuitry is just simply not filtered enough.

And it isn't a scanner either - you can scan a "bank" of 7 memories, but not in aircraft! You have to just manually push the memory buttons, so scanning is not a reality.

Interestingly enough, the internal am ferrite antenna goes all the way up to 2 mHz. It was interesting to swivel the radio around with the whip collapsed to hear some 160 meter cw band comms with directivity!

I returned the radio to my friend who is more interested in the HF side of things.