[Lowfer] What receiver do you recommend?

[WE0H]

And speaking of the Kenwood TS440 on LF, that is what I used to hear Ralph's
CW with the internal speaker one morning up here in Minnesota. I leave mine
on 24/7 with the PS on a big UPS. It works wonderful with ARGO also.

Mike>WE0H


-----Original Message-----
From: lowfer-admin@mailman.qth.net [mailto:lowfer-admin@mailman.qth.net]
On Behalf Of Steve Dove
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 5:19 PM
To: lowfer@mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Lowfer] What receiver do you recommend?

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?
>_______________________________________________