Sara schrieb:
I already own an Icom IC-R75 radio. It's fine for LSB.
So the upper sideband is broken?
I am thinking
of buying a portable for AM listening. Are these the best portables
for my purpose? I don't want a big radio.
Well, how portable exactly does it have to be? Portables reach from the
rather tiny Sony ICF-SW07 to the monstrous "Grundig" Sat 800.
The Sony SW77 is nearly $500
but the Sangean Super ATS-909 is about $330. These are what I'm
considering. Are these good choices?
Well, at least they are no bad ones.
Is there something better? $500
seems a lot for a portable. Is it the best?
A halfway recent SW77 should make a very good DX machine for a portable,
though its sound has never been too great and its operation is
frequently commented on as being rather clumsy.
Can someone help? I
understand that the Grundig is huge. I don't want to break my arm or
my back but I want something that sounds better than my Icom for AM. I
want to collect QSL cards.
OK, so you want a typical SWL oriented receiver. I'd throw in a Grundig
Satellit 700 there, good AM reception (with a decent synch detector)
along with the typical excellent FM performance and sound. (The only
weird thing is the external antenna jack, the format of which is a bit
unusual even for Euopean standards.) These fetch over 300 EUR on Ebay
even here in Germany, but are well worth it. Generally, it's never a bad
idea to try out a new receiver before buying it, particularly with the
500$ ones.
However, before purchasing a new receiver, I'd max out the existing one.
(I could have saved a lot of money, had I adhered to this rule. Now my
poor AR7030+ is sitting here with no proper antenna and merely gets used
for listing to RTL Radio in the morning, while general listenuing is
done with the Sony 7600G I started out with, used on an AN-LP1 antenna.)
In this case, that means having the various mods for the IC-R75 done
(most importantly, the synch mod), not using the DSP if present (it's
good for communications use but not for broadcasts AFAIR) and purchasing
a decent PC stereo speaker system (or maybe you have some HiFi stuff
that could be used?) and/or some good headphones (these are pretty much
a must any serious SWL anyway).
In terms of the latter, look at what impedance the receiver mfr
recommends - with consumer class receivers, it's mostly around 32 ohms,
but may be higher for communications equipment. Myself, I use Sennheiser
HD590s, generally very good sound but impedance (120 ohms) is a bit on
the high side for my 7600G, one can't get entirely noise-free FM sound.
(On the AR7030, the noise level is lower and thus generally not
disturbing.) Thus, I'd stay in the 32..64 ohm range. For some
recommendations, you may want to read through this:
http://www.headphone.com/layout.php?topicID=2&subTopicID=14 and visit
http://www.head-fi.org/.
Stephan
--
Meine Andere Seite:
http://stephan.win31.de/
PC#6: i440BX, 2xCel300A, 512 MiB, 18+80 GB, GF2MX AGP 32 MiB, 110W
This is a SCSI-inside, Legacy-plus, TCPA-free computer
Reply to newsgroup only. | See home page for working e-mail address.