[dead of night]

Hi. I'm wondering if a good shortwave portable radio is better at picking up AM and FM stations because of its circuitry and filters.

 

[D555]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dead of night Hi. I'm wondering if a good shortwave portable radio is better at picking up AM and FM stations because of its circuitry and filters.

For AM that may be true because the AM and shortwave (in most radios) will share much of the same circuitry -- mixers, IF filters, IF amp. A quality shortwave receiver will have balanced mixers and dual IF conversion -- this will reduce images from strong stations. The IF filters will usually be better chosen -- that means more selectivity. FM is usually totally separate, sharing the antenna and audio output section at most with the rest of the radio. There are some fine shortwave receivers with mediocre FM sections, Sony ICF-2010, ICF-SW7600GR, for example and there are some fine shortwave receivers with outstanding FM sections -- the Degen/Kaito DE/KA-1103 and the Grundig Satellit 700 come to mind.

Paul

 

[velocifero]

IMHO one of the best portable AM/FM radios in the moderate price range is the GE Superadio III. Yes, General Electric! The Superadio III has been around for many years, several decades if you consider its predecessors the Superadio and Superadio II.

It's old school. No digital display. A genuine dial tuner with string and gear driven needle. No S-meter. Monoaural speaker (co-axial at least), but of decent fidelity. It's big, art-deco looking with a built in handle. Uses 6x D-cell batteries.

But it has one the best AM tuners. I'm in Hawaii and can regularly pick up KSFO in San Franciso at night. FM performance is decent as well. It runs forever off of those 6 D-cells. The price? About $40 online from Amazon.com, amongst others.

 

[Gene]

I agree velocifero. I've had a Superadio III for several years. I have tried many, many long range AM-FM receivers and the Superadio III still beats them all. I think the only radio I haven't tried is the CCRadio and I've been told that at 4 times the cost, it still doesn't beat the Superadio III in sensitivity. I live in the mountains and extremely rural and need a radio to pull in stations from far away. It does great on both AM and FM bands. It's big and heavy when loaded with those 6XD cells but like you stated, plays almost forever on them. The build quality isn't the best but it's good enough. The dial tuner is not very accurate but that doesn't bother me. Another thing to mention is that it also has a built in AC cord. I got mine on sale for $26.00 but even for $40.00 it is a steal. It is without question the absolute best bargain out there for a long range radio.

Oh yeah, hi Paul! Paul knows radios.

 

[Voodoochile]

I have a Grundig Yachtboy 400PE, and while the FM performance is very good, it's not better than the Kloss Model 1 I have at work. The AM section IS better than any other AM receivers I have tried. I've not tried the GE Superadio mentioned... I'd like to check it out.

The Yachtboy is pretty nice, and is compact. Very solid tuning, dual timezones, alarm, plenty of memory space. The speaker is pretty good for being small, but the headphone jack will output stereo when you are on the FM band, which is also a nice feature.

Battery, AC cord, case, and a small wind-up SW antenna are included, so it's pretty complete.

edit: found a pic of each-

 

[sgrossklass]

In terms of FM, nothing beats a good dedicated tuner with an external antenna on a rotor. That being said, some of the better shortwave portables (or luggables in many cases) did come with excellent FM sections, the Grundig Satellit models come to mind. (The Sat 700 used three 180 kHz filters, for example.) The Panasonic RF-2200 apparently also performs excellently on FM, even though it's better known for having an outstanding AM section with a rotatable ferrite antenna. (Its "little brother" RF-1150 apparently also performs quite well in these regards. This might be the best-looking radio, ever - at least I'm not the only one who's pretty fond of the design, and I'm more than 5 years younger than the thing itself...) As far as more compact portables with two not too wide FM IF filters are concerned, the YB400(PE) and Sangean ATS-909 are quite popular, with Degens possibly being the FM kings (apart from image rejection).

Now, let's look at AM, or mediumwave as called over here. Antennas are highly important there, and typically ones responding to the magnetic field (ferrite loopsticks or loops) are used as they tend to provide good directionality (essential for DXing, or any decent night-time listening actually) and low susceptibility to near-field RF interference mostly affecting the E field. Some tuned loops even allow very high-Q resonance when coupled with an amplifier, which is neat for digging those very weak stations out of the mud right next to "local" transmitters, where even receivers with fairly steep IF filters and low LO phase noise run into their limits. Frequently big loops can also couple to internal ferrite antennas inductively. Looking at built-in ferrite bars, "longer is better" seems to apply, in both sensitivity and directionality. (Ultra-compact receivers typically do not fare very well on AM.) Receiver wise, typically a well-executed single conversion design with tuned front-end is sufficient for AM, so no advantage for dual conversion designs here (quite the contrary, as more IF stages = more noise). However, an IF filter giving good selectivity on shortwave will do the same on AM (but probably compromise on audio fidelity). Receiver wise, here's a comparison involving several popular models:
http://www.radiointel.com/review-mwolympics.htm

I'd say a shortwave portable is not superior to a dedicated FM/AM radio (some of the best AM performers are strictly FM/AM after all), but since stuff with decent shortwave sections typically costs a bit to begin with, it's not unlikely that decent FM and AM sections are thrown in as well.

 

[pbalcer]

From my experience, portable shortwave radio like Sangean ATS909 or Sony ICF-SW7600G/GR are better at picking up distant AM, FM broadcasts than average AM/FM radio.

However, dedicated AM/FM tuner can beat the portable in the strong signals handling department. I mean that dedicated, stationary AM/FM tuner will pick up a weak station located close to a strong one while portable can be completely overwhelmed by the strong station.

Other than portable "world-band" receivers and dedicated tuners, car radios are quite good at, what is called, AM/FM DXing (receiving distant transmissions). They are quite selective and handle strong signals well. Also, they are often less expensive than "world band" receivers or good AM/FM tuners.