On Apr 25, 10:51*am, Michael Black wrote:
On Sun, 25 Apr 2010, Gregg wrote:
On Apr 25, 8:31*am, Gregg wrote:
On Apr 25, 9:14*am, dave wrote:

Gregg wrote:
On Apr 24, 11:55 am, *wrote:
Am looking for the best choice of a portable AM radio, to be used mainly to
listen to talk radio, both local and national stations.

Audio sound quality and decent tuner are a must. * Inclusion of a shortwave
band would be nice, but not a requirement. *I do want digital tuning, and
station presets.

Have had a CC Crane radio for five years, and getting *a bit tired of it.
Good sound, but quality control is awful, and digital readout is flaky.

thanks !!

James

This should be fun to watch:-)

I like radios with continuously variable tuning, or at least ones with 1
kHz or better resolution, so I can off-tune slightly for better
intelligibility or interference mitigation.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

IMHO - a real good radio for the BCB or listening to talk radio should
be a radio that is strictly AM. I know - I know there are some
extremely good receivers that have the SW and FM with the AM but in
most cases there are taking 'something' away to have all three modes.
The only radio I would buy that had the AM and FM for talk radio would
be one of the SR or if you can find a GE P-780 on Ebay, grab it. I
can't count how many hundreds of hours where I have the GE on and
listening to the Reds games or talk radio, it's fabulous for that.
Just my take.ducking beer bottles- Hide quoted text -

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Oops - you say no analog and want presets, forget about my post then.
Let us know what you decided but you may want to reconsider it "having
to be" digital with presets, what's the big deal about turning the
knob and having to have stations preset? I never understood that,
especially for the BCB.

The old radios were lousy, not enough calibration marks (even when they
were accurate) and usually no logging scale. *That made it harder to get
back to a station found when tuning up and down the band. *Even something
like the R390, with mechanical digital readout, it took so many turns
of the knob (and maybe multiple turns of the band knob) to get back to
some previous station that it just wasn't great for rapidly tuning the
band. *Today's digitally tuned receivers *provide great precision in
the frequency readout, and usually make it easier to pop around, not only
is there a tuning knob (or up/down switches) but direct entry so you can
enter a few numbers and instantly get back to the general area where you
were previously tuning.

Digitially tuned radios are a vast improvement on the radios of the old
days.

* *Michael- Hide quoted text -

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Hey Michael, I'll just add that I don't really feel the same way as
you when you say "the old radios were lousy" or even your last
sentence. Though no doubt, there are pluses to the digital radios - if
it's really that big a deal - you can take care of that - not the
presets of course but having a digital next to you if it's that big a
deal to check the bands would suffice.

The only draw back IMO to my HQ129X was the lack of a digital readout.
I took care of that by having one added on and that was solved. IMO
much of having a specific receiver is how much skill you have in your
particular piece. I got to use the R75 for a little bit with a friend,
I had never used one before and he had never used the 129X with the
added on Q Multiplier...this was before I had the freq counter added
on.

There was nothing he heard on his piece (different antenna) that I
couldn't hear and even he said he liked the audio better on the
Hammarlund. There were two BCB stations though, don't remember what
they were specifically but one was on the most eastern part of
Oklahoma that he couldn't pickup on his receiver that I could on mine.
How much of it was that he only had been in the hobby for maybe a year
and a half and had the Icom for 6-7 months? I don't know. I just
wanted to see if the noise floor on that particular piece was lower
than mine, unfortunately I didn't get to test drive it to find out.

In closing, I really think it helps if you have your receiver
mastered, and I do with my Hammarlunds - specifically the 129X.