"D. Peter Maus" wrote in message
...
Thanks. The car always started with just a click of the key. Never a
problem. It was the
undercarriage that failed.


Really. In what way?

If you recall the design it had a trunk in the front as well as the rear.
What happened to
mine was that moisture up under the front apparently rotted out the area
that supported the
front struts.




No kidding. Damn. You're lucky something didn't let go on the road.

I've only encountered dramatic rust like that once. On a Renault R-5.


Fiat must have had a real issue with rust. I had a 128, cute little car.
Was driving it to work one day when it just stopped moving, but the engine
was still running. Pushed it the rest of the way to work (only 4 blocks or
so) and had a look at it. The front behind the bumper had rusted out and the
strut that held the engine up and fallen, allowing the engine to drop,
disengaging the transaxle from the wheels..

Fortunately, we had a metal shop where I worked at the time, and I was able
to fabricate a fix and got to drive home.

wrote:
On Nov 21, 7:32 pm, Bill Baka wrote:
wrote:
On Nov 21, 4:55 pm, 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
There is always XM radio. BBC world service all the time, and many
other shortwave stations on a rotating basis.
The point was I want to do my own searching and not listen to some lame
satellite station. I will *never* buy a car that requires me to pay a
satellite station $10 every month.



If you are going to do any SWL with a fixed antenna, there is really
no need to mount it in the car. I have a Welbrook ALA100 that I have
used in the field many times with home brew wire loops.
http://www.lazygranch.com/images/radio/loop1.jpg
Interesting looking setup, could be used as a direction finder too.
I have a marine RDF but it uses a pre-mounted loop-stick in the rotating
antenna. Too bad it cuts off at just over the old 2805 frequencies.
Thanks for the picture.

Bill Baka

I've done NDB DFing with the loop. It works great for that purpose.
However, it is better to use a smaller loop. I find 2ft on a side
works best for DFing. I have a setup with a holder for a compass. That
loop uses copper pipe.

Regarding shortwave radios in the car, the specs on the Sony are
pretty poor. I'm not sure it was targeted for the US market, where
there is little good shortwave to hear, other than VOA. I've seen
people mount those DC to daylight radios in the car under the dash for
shortwave.

That is what turned me off on the Sony, no real specs. What I want may
not exist or may be relegated to an Ebay find. When I see consumer
blather and no real data I turn away.

It's non-critical so I'm not pursuing it that hard.
Bill Baka

dave wrote:
http://www.shortwavestore.com/sws/mf...er-pr-506.html

This site just got bookmarked.
That one URL just made this thread worth the bother for me.
Cheers,
Bill Baka

Gregg wrote:
On Nov 22, 12:08 am, RHF wrote:
On Nov 21, 6:03 pm, Bill Baka wrote:





Brenda Ann wrote:
"Bill Baka" wrote in message
...
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
Sony still makes some really nice AM/FM/SW radios for cars (with the
requisite CD/MP3 player, etc.) that have, although not full coverage, at
least pretty decent coverage.
I will go look. A CD/MP3 player would be wasted on me since I prefer to
listen to the sounds the car and road make while I am driving.
Was going to look. The Sony home page won't work with my version of
Firefox and IE will never be allowed to slime my drive.
Maybe Egghead or Frys or some other large consumer place.
As for the antenna, car radios are made to impedence match to the relatively
short standard car radio antenna, and usually do not respond too well to
additional antenna length. You CAN, however, place a variable capacitor
between the car antenna and your random longwire, and tune it for best
reception for a given frequency. This would at least give you the advantage
of the extra capture area.
As a rule when I buy a car one of the first things I adjust is the
antenna trimmer, which is usually a bit off anyway. Funny how most
people don't even know these things exist.
- Thinking about it,
- an MFJ tuning box sitting under the dash
- should be a real conversation starter.
-
- Cheers,
- Bill Baka

They ask "What's THAT For ?"

Your reply "Oh THAT Helps me to Hear . . .
the Aliens Landing at Area 51."http://www.gamerevolution.com/images/violence/area_51.jpg
.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Ha! Yeah, back when I had my "fun car" with six antennas, I'd always
hear the response from truck drivers. I had my regular car antenna in
the front that I replaced with a larger - more sturdy antenna. I had
three scanner antennas, one antenna each on the far outside corner of
the trunk drilled through the trunk lid and the other antenna was a
glass mount that I put directly in the middle of the rear window. Then
I had a seven and a half foot skipshooter mounted (drilled through)
right in the middle of the trunk and lastly - the 108" steel whip on
the rear quarter panel.

I think I may go more covert this time around, the only problem would
be the shortwave antenna.

Six antennas? I'll bet they thought you were some kind of government
*super smokey* or something. Did truckers slow down around you?
Grinning at the thought.
Bill Baka

On 11/23/09 17:46 , Brenda Ann wrote:
"D. Peter wrote in message
...
Thanks. The car always started with just a click of the key. Never a
problem. It was the
undercarriage that failed.


Really. In what way?

If you recall the design it had a trunk in the front as well as the rear.
What happened to
mine was that moisture up under the front apparently rotted out the area
that supported the
front struts.




No kidding. Damn. You're lucky something didn't let go on the road.

I've only encountered dramatic rust like that once. On a Renault R-5.


Fiat must have had a real issue with rust. I had a 128, cute little car.
Was driving it to work one day when it just stopped moving, but the engine
was still running. Pushed it the rest of the way to work (only 4 blocks or
so) and had a look at it. The front behind the bumper had rusted out and the
strut that held the engine up and fallen, allowing the engine to drop,
disengaging the transaxle from the wheels..

Fortunately, we had a metal shop where I worked at the time, and I was able
to fabricate a fix and got to drive home.




Well, that sounds like a bad day. I've not had anything like
THAT much fun. I did strip the splines off the input receiver on the
torque converter of a '71 Torino, and went freewheeling through
South St Louis one afternoon. But nothing like that kind of rust
failure.

There for awhile, I guess FIAT was getting their engineers and
manufacturing techniques from Peugeot: The cars showed rust on the
showroom floor.

Sure saved a lot of time.

My uncle sold Peugeots and Renaults in the 50's and 60's. So, he
always had one in the driveway. Fun little cars. Not exactly
quality, but seriously fun little cars. One of the reasons I've
always wanted a Dauphine. Pre rusted, or not.

Gregg wrote:
On Nov 22, 1:02 pm, Bill Baka wrote:
D. Peter Maus 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 actually makes good sense since I don't want to listen while
driving anyway. The fading would drive me up the wall. I know the deal
on car antenna lengths and the antennas on most cars would probably tune
to 144 MHz or somewhere way up there. Figuring out how to fake a good
earth ground might be a challenge unless the mass of the car would make
it a good ground.
All for now.
Bill Baka- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Just so you know Bill, you *can* listen and drive without fading if
you're listening to a powerhouse. I listened to
China's show from the beginning on my way to Columbus and some hams
for the rest of my hour and twenty minute
drive from Cincinnati.

Like I said earlier, the best way to ground IMO your receiver or
transceiver is too run to the hardware store or your junk box and
pickup a quarter to half inch piece of metal/steel and drill the
appropriate size hole and weld it to the frame of your
car. If you don't know how to weld or don't have a arc welder....go to
any body shop. Either they'll do it for free or throw them a twenty
spot and it's done. Ground - ground and more ground is my motto. Good
luck and let us know what you do.

Just so you know, this is going (eventually) into my 1966 Chrysler
stealth hot rod and I am doing the engine right now so it will be a
while. After 250,000 miles I finally need to bore the block of my trusty
old 440 police engine. I bought the car in 1985 and can't bear to part
with it. It's a tank, but a trusty and fast tank.

Bill Baka

Brenda Ann wrote:
"D. Peter Maus" wrote in message
...
Thanks. The car always started with just a click of the key. Never a
problem. It was the
undercarriage that failed.


Really. In what way?
If you recall the design it had a trunk in the front as well as the rear.
What happened to
mine was that moisture up under the front apparently rotted out the area
that supported the
front struts.



No kidding. Damn. You're lucky something didn't let go on the road.

I've only encountered dramatic rust like that once. On a Renault R-5.


Fiat must have had a real issue with rust. I had a 128, cute little car.
Was driving it to work one day when it just stopped moving, but the engine
was still running. Pushed it the rest of the way to work (only 4 blocks or
so) and had a look at it. The front behind the bumper had rusted out and the
strut that held the engine up and fallen, allowing the engine to drop,
disengaging the transaxle from the wheels..

Fortunately, we had a metal shop where I worked at the time, and I was able
to fabricate a fix and got to drive home.



Fiat provided rust as a factory fitment, not an optional extra, back in
the seventies. That said, I owned 3 of the 128s, the last being the 3P,
a nice little hatchback bought new in 1977. I kept the hatch the
longest, passing it on to one of my nephews in about 2000. Apart from a
couple of stretched valves, a common habit I'm told, we did nothing to
the engine in 200,000 kilometres. Only rust it seemed to have was around
the hatch glass. It was still a runner when my nephew onsold it to
someone in N.S.W. about 2 or 3 years back. I rarely drove it in all the
time we had it as I had a work supplied vehicle for most of my working
life. It was just a glorified family shopping trolley. Probably did less
than 3,000 of the odometer total and a thousand of that was when we
delivered it to my nephew in another state. It was on that trip that I
discovered the standard fitment radio had good AM dx qualities. Picked
up stations from all over when we were miles from any nearby towns.
Could even pick up Melbourne station from the middle of N.S.W. Don't
know what brand it was but suspect it was some Italian variant. All the
electrics on the Fiat were Italian manufacture so reasonable to assume
the radio was as well.

Krypsis

On Nov 22, 7:38*pm, Gregg wrote:
On Nov 22, 12:08*am, RHF wrote:



On Nov 21, 6:03*pm, Bill Baka wrote:

Brenda Ann wrote:
"Bill Baka" wrote in message
...
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

Sony still makes some really nice AM/FM/SW radios for cars (with the
requisite CD/MP3 player, etc.) that have, although not full coverage, at
least pretty decent coverage.

I will go look. A CD/MP3 player would be wasted on me since I prefer to
listen to the sounds the car and road make while I am driving.
Was going to look. The Sony home page won't work with my version of
Firefox and IE will never be allowed to slime my drive.
Maybe Egghead or Frys or some other large consumer place.

As for the antenna, car radios are made to impedence match to the relatively
short standard car radio antenna, and usually do not respond too well to
additional antenna length. You CAN, however, place a variable capacitor
between the car antenna and your random longwire, and tune it for best
reception for a given frequency. This would at least give you the advantage
of the extra capture area.

As a rule when I buy a car one of the first things I adjust is the
antenna trimmer, which is usually a bit off anyway. Funny how most
people don't even know these things exist.

- Thinking about it,
- an MFJ tuning box sitting under the dash
- should be a real conversation starter.
-
- Cheers,
- Bill Baka

They ask "What's THAT For ?"

Your reply "Oh THAT Helps me to Hear . . .
the Aliens Landing at Area 51."http://www.gamerevolution.com/images/violence/area_51.jpg
*.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Ha! Yeah, back when I had my "fun car" with six antennas, I'd always
hear the response from truck drivers. I had my regular car antenna in
the front that I replaced with a larger - more sturdy antenna. I had
three scanner antennas, one antenna each on the far outside corner of
the trunk drilled through the trunk lid and the other antenna was a
glass mount that I put directly in the middle of the rear window. Then
I had a seven and a half foot skipshooter mounted (drilled through)
right in the middle of the trunk and lastly - the 108" steel whip on
the rear quarter panel.

I think I may go more covert this time around, the only problem would
be the shortwave antenna.

http://76.163.38.81/images/N7EMW%20M...e1_outside.JPG

On Nov 23, 4:13*pm, Bill Baka wrote:
Gregg wrote:
On Nov 22, 1:02 pm, Bill Baka wrote:
D. Peter Maus 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 actually makes good sense since I don't want to listen while
driving anyway. The fading would drive me up the wall. I know the deal
on car antenna lengths and the antennas on most cars would probably tune
to 144 MHz or somewhere way up there. Figuring out how to fake a good
earth ground might be a challenge unless the mass of the car would make
it a good ground.
All for now.
Bill Baka- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Just so you know Bill, you *can* listen and drive without fading if
you're listening to a powerhouse. I listened to
China's show from the beginning on my way to Columbus and some hams
for the rest of my hour and twenty minute
drive from Cincinnati.

Like I said earlier, the best way to ground IMO your receiver or
transceiver is too run to the hardware store or your junk box and
pickup a quarter to half inch piece of metal/steel and drill the
appropriate size hole and weld it to the frame of your
car. If you don't know how to weld or don't have a arc welder....go to
any body shop. Either they'll do it for free or throw them a twenty
spot and it's done. Ground - ground and more ground is my motto. Good
luck and let us know what you do.

Just so you know, this is going (eventually) into my 1966 Chrysler
stealth hot rod and I am doing the engine right now so it will be a
while. After 250,000 miles I finally need to bore the block of my trusty
old 440 police engine. I bought the car in 1985 and can't bear to part
with it. It's a tank, but a trusty and fast tank.

Bill Baka- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

That's sweet. Even better then. Are you planning on keeping a radio in
there for the 60's
era?

On Nov 23, 6:56*pm, RHF wrote:
On Nov 22, 7:38*pm, Gregg wrote:





On Nov 22, 12:08*am, RHF wrote:

On Nov 21, 6:03*pm, Bill Baka wrote:

Brenda Ann wrote:
"Bill Baka" wrote in message
...
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

Sony still makes some really nice AM/FM/SW radios for cars (with the
requisite CD/MP3 player, etc.) that have, although not full coverage, at
least pretty decent coverage.

I will go look. A CD/MP3 player would be wasted on me since I prefer to
listen to the sounds the car and road make while I am driving.
Was going to look. The Sony home page won't work with my version of
Firefox and IE will never be allowed to slime my drive.
Maybe Egghead or Frys or some other large consumer place.

As for the antenna, car radios are made to impedence match to the relatively
short standard car radio antenna, and usually do not respond too well to
additional antenna length. You CAN, however, place a variable capacitor
between the car antenna and your random longwire, and tune it for best
reception for a given frequency. This would at least give you the advantage
of the extra capture area.

As a rule when I buy a car one of the first things I adjust is the
antenna trimmer, which is usually a bit off anyway. Funny how most
people don't even know these things exist.

- Thinking about it,
- an MFJ tuning box sitting under the dash
- should be a real conversation starter.
-
- Cheers,
- Bill Baka

They ask "What's THAT For ?"

Your reply "Oh THAT Helps me to Hear . . .
the Aliens Landing at Area 51."http://www.gamerevolution.com/images/violence/area_51.jpg
*.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Ha! Yeah, back when I had my "fun car" with six antennas, I'd always
hear the response from truck drivers. I had my regular car antenna in
the front that I replaced with a larger - more sturdy antenna. I had
three scanner antennas, one antenna each on the far outside corner of
the trunk drilled through the trunk lid and the other antenna was a
glass mount that I put directly in the middle of the rear window. Then
I had a seven and a half foot skipshooter mounted (drilled through)
right in the middle of the trunk and lastly - the 108" steel whip on
the rear quarter panel.

I think I may go more covert this time around, the only problem would
be the shortwave antenna.

http://76.163.38.81/images/N7EMW%20M...1_outside.JPG- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Ha! That was good. I think mine looked cooler though, I had an actual
truck in the rear.
I really need to do that again, I miss it no doubt.