Ronald wrote:
I enjoy listening to talk radio shows at night but find my current
Radio Shack unit lacking. I live in Malibu, CA and would enjoy
listening to talk shows out of New York, Chicago and other cities with
great hosts. CC Crane offers the Sangean CCRadio Plus for $165 but
before spending this much on an AM radio does anyone have first hand
experience with it. Is there any real need to spend $165 for an AM
radio.

You're likely to be disappointed. At night the trouble is too many
stations, not weak signals. 50 watts makes it across the country,
but there's a million other watts on the same frequency along the
way.

A selective radio (=picking out only one channel) eliminates most
problems with stations on nearby frequencies (so you're really dealing
with 3 million unwanted watts, a million on each side) but you
still have the million on the frequency you're tuned to. The CC Crane
is fairly selective.

For the same price I'd go for a Sony 7600GR (http://www.jandr.com)
which at least gives you the ability to pick upper or lower sideband
with its synch detection, and gives you as a bonus shortwave as well;
it needs a MW loop antenna in the daytime and then it equals the
CC Crane. Select-a-tenna or Terk loop, for instance; get the cheap
passive models.

Daytime MW DXing is much more interesting because then sensitivity
really does matter.
--
Ron Hardin


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

Ron Hardin wrote:

Ronald wrote:
I enjoy listening to talk radio shows at night but find my current
Radio Shack unit lacking. I live in Malibu, CA and would enjoy
listening to talk shows out of New York, Chicago and other cities with
great hosts. CC Crane offers the Sangean CCRadio Plus for $165 but
before spending this much on an AM radio does anyone have first hand
experience with it. Is there any real need to spend $165 for an AM
radio.

You're likely to be disappointed. At night the trouble is too many
stations, not weak signals. 50 watts makes it across the country,
but there's a million other watts on the same frequency along the
way.

A selective radio (=picking out only one channel) eliminates most
problems with stations on nearby frequencies (so you're really dealing
with 3 million unwanted watts, a million on each side) but you
still have the million on the frequency you're tuned to. The CC Crane
is fairly selective.

For the same price I'd go for a Sony 7600GR (http://www.jandr.com)
which at least gives you the ability to pick upper or lower sideband
with its synch detection, and gives you as a bonus shortwave as well;
it needs a MW loop antenna in the daytime and then it equals the
CC Crane. Select-a-tenna or Terk loop, for instance; get the cheap
passive models.

Daytime MW DXing is much more interesting because then sensitivity
really does matter.
--
Ron Hardin



I agree completely with the last sentence. Late at night, the
differences between various AM receivers *shrinks* as compared to
daytime (though some are still much better than others, of course), but
in midday AM DX, the radios built especially for it, and in conjunction
with something like a passive inductive loop (I like the Select-A-Tenna)
can give amazing performance over the typical AM/FM radio of today with
a 79¢ AM tuner section in it.

Tony


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