carey@m.cs.uiuc.edu (09/23/88)
I would like to get a short-wave radio. I would like to get something not outrageously expensive, preferably under $200. What I want is to get high-quality receptions of broadcasts from Europe and Central and South America. Most of the ones I see in catalogs are portable, have TV, police, etc. bands, maybe a cassette tape too. I have tried to use a couple of these (never owned one) and could never get much out of them -- maybe a real noisy broadcast from Toronto or something like that. I would like to be able to have a receiver with good sensitivity and low static and good quality sound. I would connect this to my stereo equipment in my home, so it doesn't need to be anything besides a receiver(tuner). Is there anything like that around? How much would it cost?
walton@kodak.UUCP (bob walton) (09/26/88)
In article <21000003@m.cs.uiuc.edu> carey@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > >I would like to get a short-wave radio. >I would like to get something not outrageously expensive, preferably >under $200. >What I want is to get high-quality receptions of broadcasts from >Europe and Central and South America. I put together a Heathkit SW-7800. Costs about $300, works very well. One word of warning: there is no such thing as "high-quality" shortwave reception, certainly nothing worth using a stereo system for. Stations fade in and out due to the vagaries of long-distance transmission, bounce off the ionosphere, and all that. If you expect something that sounds like your local FM station, you are in for a big disappointment.
jans@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM (Jan Steinman) (09/30/88)
<<I would like to get a short-wave radio... (for) high-quality receptions of broadcasts from Europe and Central and South America.>> <...there is no such thing as "high-quality" shortwave reception, certainly nothing worth using a stereo system for. Stations fade in and out due to the vagaries of long-distance transmission, bounce off the ionosphere, and all that.> Well, at least not for the money you quoted. It is certainly possible to get considerably better quality reception than can be had with a basic receiver. Many foreign news clips come to your local station via shortwave during part of their trip, especially those of BBC, which (as of 1982, at least) had an extensive shortwave relay system. (They may have gone satellite by now.) The basic technique for improving reception that has a signal strength discontinuous in space uses what is called a "diversity combiner". Two or more receiver front-ends tuned to the same frequency are fed by antennas that are separated by a large fraction of a wavelength. The resulting signal strengths are compared, and the receiver with the strongest signal is fed to the audio. Several "golden ears" auto stereos do the same thing to eliminate or reduce multipath distortion on FM. :::::: Software Productivity Technologies -- Experiment Manager Project :::::: :::::: Jan Steinman N7JDB Box 500, MS 50-383 (w)503/627-5881 :::::: :::::: jans@tekcrl.TEK.COM Beaverton, OR 97077 (h)503/657-7703 ::::::