[Lowfer] What receiver do you recommend?

[Steve Dove]

Hi Steve,

Welcome to the wonderful world of LF radio!  (It's all downhill from here . . .)

Seriously, though, you have landed on your feet joining this reflector;  the breadth and 
depth of LF knowledge on here is outstanding.  Also resoundingly recommended is the 
Longwave Club of America's website 

http://www.lwca.org

as a leaping-off point into our chosen unreality.

As regards the TenTec RX-320,  yes indeed, unmodified it is quite deaf at LF, but the 
reasons are obvious and relatively easily circumvented.  The gain is reduced at medium-
wave (AM broadcast) and below so that the big hairy AM broadcasters don't overload the 
receiver.  If you get one, and aren't scared of a soldering iron, ask and I'll let you have 
blow-by-blow (simple) instructions on what to do to the front-end to make it startlingly 
sensitive.  As for stability, because of its design-down-to-cost approach, it is less stable 
than ideally required and than many modern radios, and would involve quite a bit of effort 
to completely stabilise.  That said, if you were to leave it on all the time and your shack 
didn't vary by more than a few degrees in temperature, it might be stable enough.

As Peter has mentioned, quite a few folks here are taken with the Icom IC-R75 receiver, 
which is good-to-go in all respects straight out of the box. Great little radio.  For LF 
purposes the DSP card is wholly unnecessary, so if you find one without, don't let that 
bother you.  Typically just under $500 new, $400 or so E-lsewhere, less without DSP.

A few older ex-higher-end model ham radio transceivers have acceptable LF 
performance;  the Kenwood TS-850 is widely regarded, as is the Yaesu FT-990.  A big 
surprise to me was that the Kenwood TS-140S (~$300) is pretty good at LF, and the older 
TS-440 (~$350) better yet.  (I picked up a 'wounded' one of these for $100 at a hamfest, 
fixed the results of a lightning hit (!) and was amazed at how sensitive it was at LF.)  The 
transceiver approach may be favourite if, as by the sound of it, you may be getting into 
ham radio, too.

Unfortunately, the nifty little 'trendy' ham radios such as the Icom 706 series, Yaesu FT-
817, 857 are LF-deaf almost beyond redemption and not really recommendable without 
specialist external preamplifiers etc. 

        All the best,

                Steve        W3EEE


11/7/2003 6:27:57 AM, Steve Hughes <hughe029@umn.edu> wrote:

 I have been reading 
>about the TenTac Rx-320 and find the price/performance and computer 
>control compelling, bug I have heard that LW sensitivity is poor. Any 
>experienced voices out there? What would you recommend for LW work?
>