Purchased this radio about a year ago and played around with it on LW. It was basically deaf to all but the stronger local NDBs. A 50' wire antenna inductively coupled to the radio through a homebrew antenna tuner woke the radio up somewhat but still no DX machine on LW. Put the radio away and never did much more with it.
Fast forward to early this morning... got the Traveller III out and tuned around on the AM broadcast band.
What a pleasant surprise. This little radio works great on AM BCB. It seems very sensitive and selective. Heard 5000 watt WMT 600 in Cedar Rapids Iowa, a new one for me as that freq is usually dominated by the more local WSNL in Flint MI. Tuning up the band, WSB 750 Atlanta came in loud and clear with no interference from local 50 kw flamethrower WJR Detroit on adjacent channel 760. Many portables have selectivity issues with strong adjacent stations but not this one. Tried tuning in various weak signals and using my CCrane TCA to enhance reception but in most cases it overloaded the Traveler III. This indicates to me that the Traveler III has plenty of built-in sensitivity. The best thing was... NO SOFT MUTING.
Soft Muting acts as sort of an anti-AGC and is ruin to the AM DXer. This radio does not have it. No muting between stations, you can hear the soft hiss of atmospheric noise between stations with, hopefully, a weak signal to try to dig out of there. Took the rear cover off to inspect what is used for an antenna. It is a ferrite rod about 1/4" dia. by 3" long, a fairly decent sized antenna for a pocket portable. Eton did everything right with this radio as far as AM BCB is concerned.
Fast forward to early this morning... got the Traveller III out and tuned around on the AM broadcast band.
What a pleasant surprise. This little radio works great on AM BCB. It seems very sensitive and selective. Heard 5000 watt WMT 600 in Cedar Rapids Iowa, a new one for me as that freq is usually dominated by the more local WSNL in Flint MI. Tuning up the band, WSB 750 Atlanta came in loud and clear with no interference from local 50 kw flamethrower WJR Detroit on adjacent channel 760. Many portables have selectivity issues with strong adjacent stations but not this one. Tried tuning in various weak signals and using my CCrane TCA to enhance reception but in most cases it overloaded the Traveler III. This indicates to me that the Traveler III has plenty of built-in sensitivity. The best thing was... NO SOFT MUTING.