AM radio reception

[firefly1957]

I do use a couple old Delco car radios from the 1990's they have very good AM reception some after market radios do not .

For a 1980's receiver / stereo in my workshop with separate am/fm antenna connections I ran a wire antenna in my garage attic . The wire was unwound from a old electric motor and coated I lost track of how long it got as I wound it walking over the joists several times . It worked great with one issue a ham operator three miles away would come in when he talked on Single Side Band . The length of an antenna makes a difference in reception by the frequency and I was demodulating a higher frequency then my tuner would normally get with that length of wire. After a thunderstorm I lost all AM reception on the radio First thing I did was check the antenna it was severed at the point I had in soldered to the shielded cable running to receiver and the AM circuits are damaged in the receiver . The receiver was off at the time of the damage and I still have FM available that storm hit in 2012 and the antenna wire was fully inside the garage attic under a asphalt shingle roof .

P.S. to earlier post my front porch bug light giving off am static died , taking it apart revealed several places the circuit board had arc marks and some parts blown out .

[MaryB]

I do use a couple old Delco car radios from the 1990's they have very good AM reception some after market radios do not .

For a 1980's receiver / stereo in my workshop with separate am/fm antenna connections I ran a wire antenna in my garage attic . The wire was unwound from a old electric motor and coated I lost track of how long it got as I wound it walking over the joists several times . It worked great with one issue a ham operator three miles away would come in when he talked on Single Side Band . The length of an antenna makes a difference in reception by the frequency and I was demodulating a higher frequency then my tuner would normally get with that length of wire. After a thunderstorm I lost all AM reception on the radio First thing I did was check the antenna it was severed at the point I had in soldered to the shielded cable running to receiver and the AM circuits are damaged in the receiver . The receiver was off at the time of the damage and I still have FM available that storm hit in 2012 and the antenna wire was fully inside the garage attic under a asphalt shingle roof .

P.S. to earlier post my front porch bug light giving off am static died , taking it apart revealed several places the circuit board had arc marks and some parts blown out .

What I call a near miss damage pattern. It induced enough voltage in the antenna to melt the solder and blow the front end transistors in the radio. 90% of lightning damaged electronics is form a near miss inducing really high voltage n the power lines or on antenna lines. Measured in the thousands of volts... I have watch it arc across a disconnected antenna lead in my ham radio shack... 1/2 inch! It takes 38,000 volts to do that!

[Swineherd]

Make a hoop antenna and complete the circuit with a DIY variable capacitor. The capacitor can be made with a cardboard paper towel tube, a sheet of paper, some aluminum foil and 2 paperclips. I'll try to find some instructions to link. I've made and used one in the past and it's amazing how well it works. Of course, you've got to align the coil 90° to the incoming signal and then slide your tube capacitor till its tuned to the specific frequency.

[Swineherd]

Here's a good variable capacitor instruction.

https://0creativeengineering0.blogsp...paper.html?m=1

[firefly1957]

Mary B that is what my thoughts are as well . I had a mess of things damage when lightening hit the two tall pines at the end of my driveway 400 feet from my house it blew the nearby power transformer also. The same stereo receiver in my garage with power off had all of the stations erased they are not dependent on power to be saved . I also lost a motion light and half of a string of L.E.D. lights that I had inside my gun safe . This string of lights had the power off inside steel safe and half the lights were exploded the other half of the string still worked. Also lost was the computer to my Onan generator in my motor home 200 feet from the blown transformer and it was in no way connected to the powerlines . I am guessing one heck of a EMP was caused by the lighting strike and internal shorting of the transformer .

I should have added this sooner about AM antenna reception I got a tip from C. Cranes owner from the old art bell show that works quite well At my last house I had the am antenna wired to my homes heating ducts and got great reception . For a while at this house I used the copper boiler pipes with decent reception in the house and these fixes are very near free .

[10x]

For a while I lived in an Apartment with hot water heating. Copper pipes between the radiators and copper baseboard radiators. This made a great ground for radios

[Tracy]

Read what MaryB says. She knows what she is talking about. Some of the others? Well enough about that.

I'll just say that I would look on auction sites and ham radio sites for a serious quality, desktop shortwave receiver. One of my favorites is an R390, but newer stuff by Yaesu, Icom and others (even the Radio Shack DX series) can work fine as well.
Then I would put up a horizontal wire antenna, outdoors to keep it away from RF noise sources in your home. 40 feet is good, longer is better. If you have a lot of noise, move the end of the wire to different positions to find the lowest noise level.

[GregLaROCHE]

While we’re on the subject of antennas, here’s an interesting experience I had. I used to have a steel sailboat. I once took the aluminum mast out so I could go under low bridges. The mast was arranged on top of the boat setting on wooden blocks. As I was passing at 90* under some very high tension wires and I could feel an electrical current. I quickly took my hand off the mast and it stopped. I’m pretty sure that the forty some foot mast acted like an antenna. The current flowed from the insulated mast, through me into the bronze steering wheel, that was bolted to the steel hull to ground in the water.

[45_Colt]

More likely was that the mast was a secondary winding of a transformer. The magnetic field of the high voltage lines induced a voltage into the mast. The power/electricity just needed a path to earth...

45_Colt

[MaryB]

While we’re on the subject of antennas, here’s an interesting experience I had. I used to have a steel sailboat. I once took the aluminum mast out so I could go under low bridges. The mast was arranged on top of the boat setting on wooden blocks. As I was passing at 90* under some very high tension wires and I could feel an electrical current. I quickly took my hand off the mast and it stopped. I’m pretty sure that the forty some foot mast acted like an antenna. The current flowed from the insulated mast, through me into the bronze steering wheel, that was bolted to the steel hull to ground in the water.

That is an old trick that was used back when electric power was just being run. Guys would run fences for 400+ yards under the power line, the top wire was insulated and acted as a transformer winding. They then rectified this and used it to charge the house battery to run lights and the radio. I can think of 1 modern case of this where the guy fed an inverter and was powering most of his house! Power company caught him because it causes a phantom load on that section and they monitor things pretty close these days to switch around failures

[GONRA]

GONRA doesn't no one end of a radio / TV from another, but
appreciates all the cool stuff you (ham radio nuts?) do for phun
and all the tricks-of-the-trade ya'll have developed

Waaay back (1960's) decided Little Family needed a color TV.
Ham Radio Nuts at verk said "get a Heath Kit" for "Best Quality".

So I did.
Soldered / assembled it all together over many days.
Passed the "smoke test".
Located / fixed one "cold soldered junction".
PERFECT !!

With my Fragile Male Ego Swelled with pride, told my Ham Radio buddy asap.
Still remember the shocked / defeated look on his face.

Turned out Ham Radio Nuts always recommended "get a Heath Kit"
since they were counting on getting a big box of Free Parts
from the screwed up amateur assembly...

[trebor44]

Five dollar yard sale find, awesome reception, with batteries or power cord. It's a GE Superadio, long range AM/FM!

[Brassmonkey]

When I was 14 I ran an antenna wire out my window up to the roof, great reception! Fm though as I was too young to desire am and hated the static.

Anyways seems electric cars interfere with the signal so much that EV automakers want to eliminate am from the in car radio.

Don't anyone worry, our politicians are fighting for us! lol
https://fortune.com/2023/05/18/congr...ar-models/amp/

[WRideout]

It's not AM broadcast, but when I was a teenage HAM operator, I ran a 40 meter dipole antenna from the house to the garage. Coax lead to my surplus bomber receiver and Heathkit transmitter. At that time novice class was limited to Morse code. Farthest I ever worked was Oregon, from Southern California where I lived.

Wayne

[MaryB]

It's not AM broadcast, but when I was a teenage HAM operator, I ran a 40 meter dipole antenna from the house to the garage. Coax lead to my surplus bomber receiver and Heathkit transmitter. At that time novice class was limited to Morse code. Farthest I ever worked was Oregon, from Southern California where I lived.

Wayne

As a novice I worked over 100 DX stations that came up into the novice band late at night... I used to rag chew on 80 meters to a friend across town. We both used a light bulb as the antenna so signals didn't go far(even then I worked some stations 1,000 miles away... on milliwatts of transmitted signal). We started out one night at 10wpm and kept increasing to see who would say uncle and ask to slow down. Friends listening in said we hit 30wpm with straight keys... I was always known for a really crisp clean sending style even at speed. Now my carpal tunnel says NO to CW... unless I use a keyboard to send it.

[Skipper]

I have cousin in Arkansas that was having reception problems. He tossed a long wire way up into a pine tree and connected it to the antenna input.
Worked like a charm.

[farmerjim]

I remember back as a novice. It took me about a month to learn morse to pass the 5 WPM test. It about 3 more weeks to get to 13 WPM. My first QSO with a 75 watt homemade transmitter was with a ham about 2 miles from me.
I quickly worked most of the US and even Japan.
I need to get my old HW16 (Morse transceiver) out of the barn and get back on HF CW. ( High freq Morse)

[William Yanda]

"Probably because you can rig a real serious antenna to it." Waksupi

And the tuner is very discriminating, at least that's what the boss told me when I worked at a radio station.

[MaryB]

I remember back as a novice. It took me about a month to learn morse to pass the 5 WPM test. It about 3 more weeks to get to 13 WPM. My first QSO with a 75 watt homemade transmitter was with a ham about 2 miles from me.
I quickly worked most of the US and even Japan.
I need to get my old HW16 (Morse transceiver) out of the barn and get back on HF CW. ( High freq Morse)

HW-16 was my first transceiver! A piece of garbage Eico VFO that frequency warbled if you bumped it LOL I loved 15 meters, worked a lot of DX on that band! 40 and 80 meters were okay from it but I had substandard antennas on those bands. 40m was a really low dipole all of 20' off the ground, 80m was a 30' tall electrical conduit vertical with a matching coil at the base and a capacity hat wire system guy wires/ropes, it worked but efficiency was horrible at around 3% since dad refused to let me run ground wires all over his backyard LOL

[farmerjim]

I had 2 inverted V,s. One for 40 and 15 and the other for 80.
Ground rod went into wet peat and soil.