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Shortwave for cars?
On 11/23/09 16:12 , dxAce wrote:
"D. Peter Maus" wrote: On 11/23/09 13:44 , dxAce wrote: "D. Peter Maus" wrote: On 11/23/09 09:24 , dxAce wrote: "D. Peter Maus" wrote: On 11/23/09 08:18 , dxAce wrote: "D. Peter Maus" wrote: On 11/23/09 01:19 , Gregg wrote: On Nov 22, 8:44 am, "D. Peter 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 was a great post Peter. I liked the guardrail story.:-) My friend hooked onto the railroad tracks once before keying up a lot of wattage on his CB, he used the RR tracks as his ground.shaking my head I really never thought about hooking to the RR tracks for a shortwave antenna, what do you think the results would be? Not sure. That would be the fun of the experiment. It may be little different than the guard rail. It may be something entirely different. The results should be unexpected and dramatic. What type of car were you refering to when you said "308"?? Just curious. Think "Magnum PI." Great car. As I recall it was a 308GTBI, or like that? I went to the factory and saw them built right along with my once loved FIAT X1/9 !!! Magnum's was a 308 GTS. The 'B' was for the Berlinetta, the hard top, and 'I' was for injection. His was a GTS(pyder), carbureted. Mine was the 308 GTSI-QV. Mine was injected, 32 valve on the same 3.0L V-8. It wasn't quick, but it was FAST. And serious fun to drive. You had an X1/9? Yeah, metallic black, 1979 version as I recall, with the more integrated bumpers. A great car, put at least 170k plus on it from coast to coast. That's actually pretty good for that engine. It wasn't known for longevity. 170k is a serious amount of driving fun. I'd say you got your money out of it. You got everybody's money out of it. Nicely done. 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. |
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