"John Barnard" wrote in message
...
I have the HQ-180, R-390A and the SP-600 and I have found that each has
pros and
cons with regards to AM reception. When I was back east (in Montreal) I
found that
the phasing control on the SP-600 gave an advantage for chasing down
Europeans and
Middle Eastern stations (ie. Saudi Arabia on 1521 kHz vs Buffalo on 1520
kHz).
Phasing sent Buffalo in the dirt and the Saudi station came through
nicely. I use
the KIWA MW loop for AM DXing.

I second John's praise of the SP-600. I'm not nostalgic for boatanchors but
mine was the best MW DX receiver I ever used. Among its other advantages was
its excellent shielding. Signals just couldn't get in anywhere but through
the coax from the antenna. I lived on a high hill with a direct view to a
50-kW MW BC station about 5 miles (8 km) away. I had a large radio room with
no foil insulation in the walls, and a 4-foot (1.1-m) square loop on a wood
frame, that tilted and turned. Working close in frequency to the local BC
station, the loop's ability to null wouldn't have been as effective if the
receiver had allowed the signal to leak in through other paths. There is
more to a good receiver than the oft-cited on rrs "sensitivity." True
sensitivity can be more curse than blessing. The receiver needs enough
_gain_ to make weak signals hearable, but more important is immunity to
strong, adjacent signals, steep-sided variable selectivity, low internal
noise (like synthesizer phase noise) and low-distortion audio. Short of the
Drake R8, you just don't get all those features in modern consumer
receivers, especially portables. Of course, the SuperPro was not a consumer
receiver, either. McSangeans are fine for _listening_. For serious DXing you
need more. To forestall reports of "Well, PM, I heard this and that on my
McSangean/McSuperRadio," yes, you can hear distant stations with almost any
receiver, sometimes. A high-quality _communications_ receiver (what's
inside, not what it says on the front panel) lets you hear more stations,
more reliably.

"PM"