wrote in message
ups.com...

[snip]

Many radios would sound much better with some attention to the audio
chain.
I used to think that a "little" distortion didn't matter. After all the

signals get pretty mangled by the ionosphere. And I was wrong. It makes
a
great difference. I have spent the day listening to HF and going back
and
forth just to get a feel for it.

The Radio Amateur's handbooks have some interesting articles about
increasing intelligibility in radio transmissions.

The older ones will have articles about AM ham radio transmissions.




While I would love to buy a really "good" receiver like the AOR7030+,
or
one of the better Drakes, or even an NRD, money being rather tight, I
am
happy to get any improvements I can.


Terry


You might want to consider a tube radio. A tube radio will get the best
performance from a simple diode detector. The diode detector works quite
well, except when the voltage across it gets low. As the voltage gets low,
the diode's equivalent resistance goes up rapidly. Working the diode at a
higher average voltage and into a high impedance load minimize these
problems.

In general, the consumer SW sets will sound better than the
communications/ham receivers.

Frank Dresser