Lostgallifreyan wrote:
Jeff wrote in :

It is a perfectly adequate radio for what it was designed to be; a
portable that you take away on holiday to listen to BBC world service
on, but as for using it for anything more it is lacking.


Lacking what, specifically? I wanted a general purpose radio with full AM
coverage to 30 MHz, and I wanted it to be cheap and portable. Then I wanted
to give it a decent chance of getting signals when I'm not carrying it
around.

Chiming in late on this one.

The antenna isn't usually the limiting factor on modern radios. You'll
likely do as well with a random wire as a seriously engineered system.
Since you're only receiving, this is the case.

If you are wanting 500 KHz to 30 MHz, and you want full coverage, you'll
be hard pressed to beat a random length dipole and maybe give yourself a
little tuning cap on your end if you like. Just put up as much wire as
your space will permit, and there you go. This assumes that you use
ladder line to feed, not coax. For such a wide range antenna, ladder
line is the way to go.

That's going to wring out just about the last bit of performance you can
expect, unless you want to go to the bitter edge and construct
directional antennas. At the 500 KHz end, that will be a tad difficult.

Now for your application, the performance difference between a chunk of
wire, my random length dipole, and some directional gastraphagus will be
surprisingly little.

Use, or do not use the advice.

- 73 de Mike N3LI -