Until recently, I lived in an apartment complex where neighbors bombarded me
with impossible levels of electrical appliance QRM (to the point that DXing
was difficult to impossible). About a month ago, I moved to a much better
location with much less noise, where I'm hoping to get back into the hobby.

I also now own a laptop (a Dell 4150) that I would like to use to make
digital recordings of signals I receive. The idea is to use the laptop as a
replacement for the cassette recorder I used years ago to play back weak or
hard-to-understand transmissions for digging out an ID or to hear details I
missed listening live. I'd also like to save an archive of station IDs,
interval signals, and interesting programs I pick up in digital form for
posterity. I've used the laptop while it was sitting next to the R5000
without any apparent interference problem, so I'm hoping I can use the
laptop for this purpose.

My radio is a Kenwood R5000, with a "Record" jack on the front, and my
laptop has a microphone input which hopefully I can use to get the audio
into the machine.

I'm wondering whether anyone has a similar setup. If so, is there anything I
should know about connecting the radio to the laptop, and can you recommend
recording and playback software that would allow me to listen to segments of
a recording and also edit the audio file (mostly removing the parts I don't
need to save)? The laptop is running Windows XP Home, if that makes a
difference.

Any ideas would be most appreciated.

--Larry

In article , Larry wrote:

My radio is a Kenwood R5000, with a "Record" jack on the front, and my
laptop has a microphone input which hopefully I can use to get the audio
into the machine.

When the R5000 first came out one very popular reviwer panned it's recording
capabilty because the record out was so distorted it was unuseable.

Turn out he missed the point that it was LINE level and not microphone
level. If you have a LINE in on you computer use it. You may want to get
a cable to combine both inputs to get the mono signal on both chanels
of your stereo computer.

If you only have a MIC input on your computer buy an antennuater plug
from Radio Shack. Just look for a device to allow you to record LINE
strength signals from a cassete recorder with only MIC input.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, C.T.O. GW&T Ltd., Jerusalem Israel

IL Voice: 972-544-608-069 IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838

Thanks for the suggestions. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to set this up this
weekend and start recording some of my listening.

--Larry

When I tried to make recordings off the R5000 to a cassette recorder years
ago, the result was often somewhat distorted. Now I know why! I'll try out
an attenuator plug this weekend, when I'm hoping to have a chance to set
this up.

--Larry

Larry wrote:

When I tried to make recordings off the R5000 to a cassette recorder years
ago, the result was often somewhat distorted. Now I know why! I'll try out
an attenuator plug this weekend, when I'm hoping to have a chance to set
this up.

I never had a problem when using a recorder with the R5000. But, I was using
cassette recorders which had/have an AUX input.

My favourite one is the Radio Shack CTR-66 which is no longer made, but is
available on eBay from time to time.

I also like the CTR-37, also no longer made, but available on eBay.

I have several of each.

I used to do a lot of DX'ing via setting the timer on the receiver so that I
didn't have to get up at early hours in the morning. I'd simply review my tape
the next day, and if I didn't get good results I'd simply do it again.

Steve
Holland, MI
Drake R7, R8 and R8B

http://www.iserv.net/~n8kdv/dxpage.htm

Based on my experience last night, using a cassette recorder seems to be my
only workable approach.

At my previous location, the electrical noise was so bad that when I used my
laptop near the radio I didn't notice any change in the noise level. In this
quieter location, it's a totally different story.

I set things up last night. I used a patch cable with a ferrite core, as you
suggested, to connect the radio to the laptop. The arrangement worked fine
when I began my tests, using a good strong 19-meter station (probably VOA).
Things were different, though, when I tried to tune in weaker stations. I
encountered serious electrical noise.

And the noise was coming from the laptop's AC power adaptor, not from the
laptop. I powered down and disconnected the laptop, leaving the AC adaptor
plugged into the wall. The noise was just as strong as before. As soon as I
unplugged the AC adaptor from the wall, the QRM vanished. I tried using
ferrite cores at various locations on the AC adaptor cords, but none of them
made any difference at all.

I can actually use the radio-to-laptop setup if I run the laptop on its
internal batteries, but that would give me less than 90 minutes of useful
time (at least that's what my laptop's manual gives for the average time
between charges). That's not acceptable, since I'll want to spend more time
than that at the radio when reception is right.

I guess I'm back to using an old-fashioned cassette recorder for now.

--Larry