Scott Dorsey wrote:

In article , Higgins wrote:
Get my friend out of his car!!! He's a lifelong New Yorker who has
moved to Gaithersburg, MD, a bit NW of Washington, D.C. He's a diehard
fan of NYC sports talk station WFAN (not streamed on the net), 770 Am.
He can get it on his car radio, but not in the house. So he'll sit in
his driveway at night listening to The Fan. Obviously, he's got a
better antenna in the car. So how can I help him put a good AM antenna
in his house??? I've seen the C Crane site, and a Terk unit or two.
I'm not terribly interested in a homebrew solution.

Why not? A longwire antenna will beat any of the active antennas hands down.
Problem is that it may be so good that you'll find yourself needing a more
selective radio.

It's probably not the antenna. Signals are plenty strong at night. More likely
selectivity of the receiver.

The Sony 7600GR on sale at Bennett Bros for $109 is a great deal, with really
high selectivity (owing hugely to sync detection and selectable sideband) for
the price; and you get shortwave too.

http://cyg.bennettbrothers.com:80/bl...emb er%5Fnum=

Want to use it (or any radio) also _in the daytime_ out to hundreds of miles range on the AM band?
Get a passive MW loop, say the Terk loop, to set beside it. It's a tuned circuit, a big coil and
a variable capacitor is all, that matches the impedance of the internal loopstick antennas in AM
radios to free space, letting you in most radios hear right down to the propagating noise level;
which is the best you can do with any small antenna.

This matters only in the daytime. At night, all the AM band signals are strong; there's too
many of them, is the problem then.

In the daytime, D-layer absorption soaks them all up leaving only groundwave signals, which are
genuinely weak.

Probably you can only hear the FAN at night from DC, though I don't know. I've heard it at noon
in Central Ohio http://rhhardin4.home.mindspring.com/wfannoon.ra

--
Ron Hardin


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

Ron Hardin wrote in message ...
Probably you can only hear the FAN at night from DC, though I don't know. I've heard it at noon
in Central Ohio http://rhhardin4.home.mindspring.com/wfannoon.ra


My pal would probably listen to that, static and all.

I'll check out the Sony and help him play with antennas. I understand
his pain....should a longwire be any particular length for an AM
station at 770??? And is this one of those "yeah, a mile and a half"
issues??? My friend does have a house with a fairly good-sized yard...