Hung a new antenna (the largest ever for my QTH) this weekend. Rope,
wire, pulleys, trees. Previously most of my antenna attempts were loops
or short wires in the attic. This one has them all beat hands-down in
terms of length and height.

Took my old Hallicrafters SX-110 out of the crawlspace and dusted the
top a bit. I've owned it for fifteen years now, using it for a few
dozen hours in the early 90's when I got it, and a few dozen hours in
the late 90's as the "upstairs radio" before the first baby came.

The SX-110 on the new antenna does damn good. All the major SW stations
come in clearly and without much QRM from adjacent signals. Tuning
action is pretty good, but some slip in the dial string contraption
that I should look into clearing up. Selectivity is better than I
remember, and while there's a few adjacent signals clobbered tonight on
the fairly crowded bands it's better than I remember. Tone and audio
quality coming through a little bookshelf speaker is surprisingly good,
not necessarily very mellow but quite clear.

The WJ-8716 and R-390A do pretty good on the new antenna too.

Most of the modern solid-state receivers do pretty bad with the new
long antenna though. Problem with the new antenna: the local (1 mile
away) BCB station is about 10V RMS on the antenna, and shows up as
intermod everywhere up and down the bands on all the consumer
solid-state radios (little to no preselection). Time for me to dig out
the old 630kc trap coil and see if it can knock that stupid signal
down!

The SX-110 might go in my new office next week. I have a beautiful
window looking down on Washington DC. I suspect I can get some good
mid-day SWL'ing in with a loop around my enormous windows.... :-).

Tim.

I once read somewhere that rosin (resin?) like the kind that violin
players use on their bows is suppose to work pretty good on dial
strings.You might try that out.
cuhulin

wrote:


Most of the modern solid-state receivers do pretty bad with the new
long antenna though.

Some of the newer crap that passes as high-end HF receivers (*cough*
R75 *cough*) have wide-open front ends. I ended up selling off most
of my gear and hanging on to an RX-340 and two IC-R8500s, both of
which have tank-like front ends.

In the meantime, a BCB filter like that from PAR can help, also, a
step attenuator when having problems can help with the front-end
overload.


--
Eric F. Richards,
"It's the Din of iBiquity." -- Frank Dresser

wrote:
Hung a new antenna (the largest ever for my QTH) this weekend. Rope,
wire, pulleys, trees. Previously most of my antenna attempts were loops
or short wires in the attic. This one has them all beat hands-down in
terms of length and height.

Took my old Hallicrafters SX-110 out of the crawlspace and dusted the
top a bit. I've owned it for fifteen years now, using it for a few
dozen hours in the early 90's when I got it, and a few dozen hours in
the late 90's as the "upstairs radio" before the first baby came.

The SX-110 on the new antenna does damn good. All the major SW stations
come in clearly and without much QRM from adjacent signals. Tuning
action is pretty good, but some slip in the dial string contraption
that I should look into clearing up. Selectivity is better than I
remember, and while there's a few adjacent signals clobbered tonight on
the fairly crowded bands it's better than I remember. Tone and audio
quality coming through a little bookshelf speaker is surprisingly good,
not necessarily very mellow but quite clear.

The WJ-8716 and R-390A do pretty good on the new antenna too.

Most of the modern solid-state receivers do pretty bad with the new
long antenna though. Problem with the new antenna: the local (1 mile
away) BCB station is about 10V RMS on the antenna, and shows up as
intermod everywhere up and down the bands on all the consumer
solid-state radios (little to no preselection). Time for me to dig out
the old 630kc trap coil and see if it can knock that stupid signal
down!

The SX-110 might go in my new office next week. I have a beautiful
window looking down on Washington DC. I suspect I can get some good
mid-day SWL'ing in with a loop around my enormous windows.... :-).

Tim.


Somewhere, Bill Halligan is pointing toward Japan and laughing his
ass off.

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:05:45 UTC, D Peter Maus
wrote:

wrote:
Hung a new antenna (the largest ever for my QTH) this weekend. Rope,
wire, pulleys, trees. Previously most of my antenna attempts were loops
or short wires in the attic. This one has them all beat hands-down in
terms of length and height.

Took my old Hallicrafters SX-110 out of the crawlspace and dusted the
top a bit. I've owned it for fifteen years now, using it for a few
dozen hours in the early 90's when I got it, and a few dozen hours in
the late 90's as the "upstairs radio" before the first baby came.

The SX-110 on the new antenna does damn good. All the major SW stations
come in clearly and without much QRM from adjacent signals. Tuning
action is pretty good, but some slip in the dial string contraption
that I should look into clearing up. Selectivity is better than I
remember, and while there's a few adjacent signals clobbered tonight on
the fairly crowded bands it's better than I remember. Tone and audio
quality coming through a little bookshelf speaker is surprisingly good,
not necessarily very mellow but quite clear.

The WJ-8716 and R-390A do pretty good on the new antenna too.

Most of the modern solid-state receivers do pretty bad with the new
long antenna though. Problem with the new antenna: the local (1 mile
away) BCB station is about 10V RMS on the antenna, and shows up as
intermod everywhere up and down the bands on all the consumer
solid-state radios (little to no preselection). Time for me to dig out
the old 630kc trap coil and see if it can knock that stupid signal
down!

The SX-110 might go in my new office next week. I have a beautiful
window looking down on Washington DC. I suspect I can get some good
mid-day SWL'ing in with a loop around my enormous windows.... :-).

Tim.


Somewhere, Bill Halligan is pointing toward Japan and laughing his
ass off.
I, so far, have logged almost 30 states on my old S-38 with just a
long wire and a ground. It is restored and along with the HE-10,
pulls in great DX!


--
"What do you mean there's no movie?"

I own a nice Hallicrafters S-38EB radio that I bought at a Goodwill
store for four dollars about ten years ago.It works too,but I never got
around to putting up a proper antenna.A long piece of extension line
isn't a proper antenna,is it?
cuhulin