What makes those old Zenith radios so good?
 

Jeff Strieble wrote:

local stations from there just fine, all the time. What really amazes
me, however, is how well this radio works with very weak signals. I
like to listen to a 500-watt station in a city some 20 miles west of
me; the station comes in reasonably well during the day on all my
radios, but at night, when the station reduces power to 42 watts (and,
I suspect, uses a directional nighttime antenna pattern as well), most
of my sets get nothing but a hodgepodge of stations on the frequency
(1330 KHz) and, obviously, I can't find the station any longer until
sunrise the following morning.

See
http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin...ELW&service=AM

However, this station is audible until well after sunset Eastern time
on my Zenith K731, as well as a 5kw station in Cleveland that also
fades into the noise on most of my sets after dark. What is it about
these older sets that made them such hot performers, especially in
fringe areas?

It can range across the gamut of answers. The most obvious would be the
orientation of the internal antenna in the set. I notice the same with
many "plain old AA5" radios in my location. Some are hot, some are not.


of me, with the AFC off). I didn't think Zenith, or any other radio
manufacturer for that matter, was even making its radios good enough
for fringe-area or outright DX reception by the late '50s or early
'60s.

I find that every Canadian-made AA5 (or would that be AC5) set has
always been better than its American-made counterparts...maybe for the
prevalence of 'fringe-area' reception buyers?

I'm not qualified to say where the difference lies between an Brand-X
AA5 and a Brand-Y of the same thing. EH Scott made a big to-doo about
his receivers minimizing minor circuit losses back in the 20s and set
out to prove it with occasional reception of his Chicago station in New
Zealand which apparently no one else could do at the time.

Its often parroted these days that a sensitive front end on BCB these
days is a waste because of noise floor, etc. If you've ever used a GOOD
BCB radio, you'll immediately recognize that as apologetic BS.

By the '60s 50-kw 24-hour clear channel stations were
commonplace in most major cities (Cleveland had two 50 kw powerhouses
in the '60s, KYW [later WKYC, still later WWWE and WTAM] 1100

I've never heard it discussed as an "issue" but the directional patterns
of state-of-the-art AM stations can be pretty severe. In the case of
Cleveland, I know that when WKNR went 'nightime' they simply disappeared
from the dial in Oberlin, OH 30 miles away. A mile or two north of town
they were still audible.
They have apparently 'fixed' this anomaly just recently. The fault can
apparently be anything from a nearby chainlink fence to well-fed cows
grazing on the grounds. :-)

-BM