There Is No Cat

Mary Lu wants to know about my radios

Mary Lu Wehmeier, radio geek, has a nice post about the GE SuperRadio and the Henry Kloss Model One radios, both of which I own. (It appears that there’s a new Kloss coming out that does stereo, which she mentions. Looks interesting.) I was teasing her in her comments section that she didn’t want to know what I used for AM radio, but she does. I tried posting this to her comments section, but it will only accept 2500 characters. So, Mary Lu, this is for you.

Well, if you really want to know....

In addition to the two SuperRadios, I’ve got an old Panasonic RF-2200, long noted as one of the hottest mediumwave receivers available. It’s one of the last of the pre-digital readout radios, but has an excellent tuning system with crystal calibrators that allow me to be accurate within a kiloHertz.

My two main rigs, though, are a Drake R8, which I’ve had for about eight years, and an AOR AR-7030 Plus, which I’ve had for two years. I tend to describe the R8 as the Toyota Camry of high-end tabletop shortwave radios. It’s solid, dependable, comes with everything you need, and never breaks down. The current model, the R8B, is better than my old R8, but not by enough that I’ve felt a need to replace mine. The audio on the R8 is excellent.

If the R8 is a Camry, then the British-designed AR-7030 Plus is a Triumph Spitfire: idiosyncratic as hell, a lot of fun to drive, and spends half its time in the shop. (Mine actually needs to go in to fix a blown preamp.) The interface of the radio is all menus. People who are used to computers tend to be comfortable with the radio; people who aren’t find it drives them nuts. The audio on this radio is first class; the radio’s designer, John Thorpe, also designs high-end stereo equipment, and the audio chain throughout the radio reflects that. When I send the radio in, I’m thinking of getting it retro-fitted so it can serve as the front end of a digital shortwave receiver as well.

I have two antennas that I use for AM. The first is just a really long piece of wire strung out in the woods behind our house. The second is a Kiwa loop, which is just a gorgeous piece of kit. It almost looks like a piece of sculpture or something. And it’s an amazing antenna. With the regenerative tuning circuit that controls the antenna, I can tune the loop so it has a bandwidth of about 2 kiloHertz if I need to. If I’m getting crud on one side of the signal, I can detune that side of the signal so that only the clean sideband is peaked. It’s unbelievable.

Unfortunately, our current house sits within two miles of two AM transmitters, which causes all kinds of problems. Before I got the antenna system worked out, I was getting mixing products between the two local stations and strong international shortwave broadcasters showing up all over the radios. Turns out something on the house is rectifying them, maybe the gutters. And I don’t think the Kiwa likes the siding on this house, because it’s not as directional here as it was when I was living with my parents some years ago. Back then, I used to be able to hear European mediumwave stations regularly, and some, like Spain, even qualified as pests. :-)

I told you you didn’t want to know....

Incidentally, that monstrous Grundig Satellit 800 you mention is not half bad as a radio. The innards were designed by Drake, and were originally sold by them as the SW-8. It’s a direct descendent of the R8 I mentioned above. The company that markets Grundig in North America, Lextronix, worked out a deal with Drake to build the circuitry in China and house it in a different (much larger) box so they could sell them more cheaply and sell a ton of them. It seems to have worked. I don’t want one, because my house is too small for a radio that big. :-) But it’s a very good deal at the price, particularly if you get one of the reconditioned units. Drake does all the servicing on the 800s, and their service department is legendary. There were quality control problems with the initial runs of the 800, so my take is that the reconditioned units from Drake were even better than new.

Posted at 11:30 PM