Regarding the international airport, your interest would be in
international air traffic control, which does use HF. You can google
around for MWARA frequencies. I have them for the left coast. I haven't
tune them in ages, but will do so tonight for the hell of it. It's like
air traffic control, but the pace is much slower since there isn't that
much traffic.

I have the older Sony 7600. It works fine on shortwave broadcast. The
VFO resolution isn't fine enough for sideband, though it does have a
analog control to tweak it in (clarifier).

If you expect to do sideband, you need a radio with two filter
bandwidths (at the very least). Using the wide filter for AM lets too
much noise through on sideband.


wrote:
The previously mentioned suggestion of taking the radio outside for a
walk is an excellent tip. This is how I achieve the best reception.

Thanks for the tip. I did indeed take it outdoors - out on a pier into
the lake - and the change in reception was hardly noticeable. Then for
safe keeping I drove quite a distance outside of town to the
middle-of-nowhere VT - no mountians, no woods, just a big open field -
with the same results.

What exactly are you hearing when you step through the 49m or 31m bands
at night? Any faint voices? What kind of noise?

31m - nothing. 49m - occasional extremely static-filled voices.
Absolutely nothing that would be considered intelligible.

A good test signal for you since you're in the USA is the WWV
(http://tf.nist.gov/timefreq/stations/wwv.html) broadcasts on 2.5 mhz,
5 mhz, 10 mhz, 15 mhz, and 20 mhz. 5 mhz is the most reliable for me
in the evening (over here in northern California).

Historically I don't receive any of them, though this afternoon I just
barely received the 20mhz broadcast - but again, completely filled with
static and almost unable to be heard.

I do get the 3330 time broadcast from Canada, but it too is not exactly
well received.

One of my favorite broadcasts is Radio Havana Cuba:
0500-0700 UTC: 6 mhz, 6.06 mhz, 9.55 mhz, 9.82 mhz, 11.76 mhz

I suspect that would be one of my favorites as well. ;-) Unfortunately
I have tried and tried - those seem to be common hours for me to be
trying - and have not been able to get it.

Spoke with Grundig tech support today and they didn't have too much too
offer. Very nice people, to their credit, but because of all the
variables involved they were unable to say if it sounds more like a
receiver hardware problem or just general reception issues. I'm going
to continue testing this evening.

Due to the return policy of the company it was ordered from (universal
radio) I need to decide quickly if I'll be returning/exchanging it.
The question that comes up is that, if I do exchange it, would I be
better off upgrading to a different radio? Aesthetic appeal aside, the
Eton E1 seems to have good reviews everywhere. But is the difference
in sensitivity enough to justify the extra money?

I'm also interested in, eventually, tracking down some of the SSB
traffic around my area. I have an international airport down the road,
coast guard virtually next door and a city full of people. The YB
isn't picking up anything there either when in SSB mode, but then, it
got poor reviews on that aspect. Would the E1 be any better?

-P