[Premium-Rx] Looking for recommendations on high performance VLF receiver.

[NA NA]

Tom, I also get the NDB bug on occasion and own a CEI-357, although I have decided it needs the power supply capacitors replaced soon due to some  hum on the audio. The noise blanker does work quite well on my CEI-357. Last month I tried out my  WW2 vintage National NC-100ASD which has a 200 to 400 kHz range and was able to log about 20  NDBs over  about  2 hours during early evening  one night from my Las Vegas, NV location, including about half a dozen Canadian beacons and CLB in Wilmington NC, at  a distance of about 2100 miles. The following night I used my JRC NRD -525 receiver which is excellent on VLF and also a Drake R-7 which is also very good. About 40 more beacons were logged over a 3 hour time period.  My location is not the best and antenna nothing fancy, just a 15 ft vertical mounted about 20 feet up at one end of my house and fed by 50 ohm coax to my receiver. Over the years I have logged several hundred different NDBs and although the number of beacons out there is decreasing, on a good winter night there are still dozens that can be heard at any one time and always some that I haven't logged before. 

A great help for logging weak NDBs is my very obsolete Gateway laptop computer running on Windows 95 with Spectran software connected to the receiver audio which allows me to visually identify using a waterfall display beacons that are too weak or hard to separate from others on the same frequency. I have tried newer laptops and software, but always end up going back to the Gateway due its lack of RF noise generation. 

Les


> 
>     Hi Folks!
> 
>     I've been having a blast pulling in VLF aircraft beacons in the 200-525 K/c range.
> 
>     I am looking for recommendations for a premium receiver that will cover VLF. If it can cover say VLF to HF (maybe 10k/c - 30 Mc, that would be even better!)
> 
>     Due to the nature and spacing of the signals, selectivity is an absolute must! Signals can typically be 2 K/c apart from each other, creating all sorts of heterodyne issues.
> 
>     My best receiver is the CEI-357 (R-1401): Sensitivity is good, selectivity is also quite good, but the noise blanker doesn't seem to work, and this a real performance killer (especially since we're getting into the noisy time of year!).
> 
>     The CEI-357 has 6 K/c, 3 K/c, 1 K/c, and 100 Hz filters. For VLF work, the 3 and 1 K/c filters are what I primarily use. The 1 K/c filter gets used the most. Being able to use a .5 K/c filter would be a huge asset for pulling in the Canadian beacons that have the 400 Hz modulation.
> 
>     Having the ability to go from AM to USB and LSB is also a huge plus: I bagged a beacon in the Caribbean (a 3900 mile path!) because I was able to switch to SSB and use a narrow filter.
> 
>     Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
> 
>     -Tom
> 
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