"D. Peter Maus" wrote:

On 11/23/09 01:19 , Gregg wrote:
On Nov 22, 8:44 am, "D. Peter
wrote:
On 11/21/09 18:55 , Bill Baka wrote:

Has anyone seen any shortwave radios in cars lately? I remember a few
from across the pond back in the 60's but it seems to have died out as a
fad. I would like to put one in one of my cars rather than a boom box
thing and be able to tune the world from wherever I find myself.
The other advantage is that I can drive to a spot with no power lines
for miles at night to listen relatively static free. I could (in theory)
take a long wire on a fishing pole (28-32AWG?) and put on a disposable
weight and toss it as far as possible into some high trees. Once it is
stuck firmly just back the car up until the whole spool is used up and
connect the car antenna to it.
Anybody tried it or anything like it?

Bill Baka

I have a Becker 2340 I used in my 308 for years. That was the
last aftermarket radio I saw with SW. I've heard tell of some
Sony's, but not being interested in anything from Sony, I never
pursued them.

The Becker offered excellent SW performance on the car's antenna.
A little ignition noise in deep fades, but not enough to complain
about. The injectors on 18 wheelers were more of a problem than
ignition noise. It has 40 or so memories. And exceptional audio.

As for driving out into the weeds...we had a member of this
group, living in Colorado, who used to drive out into Wyoming and
about two miles outside of Jackson Hole would hook his SW-2 up to
the guard rail and use that as a makeshift pseudo Beverage.

With dramatic results.

But attaching anything to your car radio antenna will not get you
where you want to go.

A car antenna does not really operate as an antenna. It's too
short for medium wave. It operates more like a capacitive element,
and is trimmed at the input to optimize performance. Attach a wire
to the car antenna, and you'll change it's capacitive value, and
throw your input out of balance. You're also likely to change that
whip into something that behaves more like a real antenna and
seriously overload your front end. On some models this can be
disastrous.

A better option would be to see if you can find an in-dash on the
used market, or take something like an SW-8 with you, mount it
underdash and enjoy it as a real shortwave receiver with a separate
antenna system.

That was a great post Peter. I liked the guardrail story.:-)

My friend hooked onto the railroad tracks once before keying up a lot
of wattage on his CB, he used the RR tracks as his ground.shaking my
head

I really never thought about hooking to the RR tracks for a shortwave
antenna, what do you think the results would be?

Not sure. That would be the fun of the experiment. It may be
little different than the guard rail. It may be something entirely
different. The results should be unexpected and dramatic.

What type of car were you refering to when you said "308"?? Just
curious.

Think "Magnum PI."

Great car. As I recall it was a 308GTBI, or like that? I went to the factory and
saw them built right along with my once loved FIAT X1/9 !!!