Post by gbowne1 on Sept 13, 2007 19:38:32 GMT -5
I've been doing a lot of AM / MW DX over the past 15-20 years. I've always enjoyed listening to far away MW stations.
If I can get it set up right, I will post my log here for people to see. But, from my area in Seattle, WA I've gotten tons of stations in California, Oregon, Washington and places like Billings, MT; Salt Lake City, UT, Denver, Colorado, and various points North, North East and several to the NNW.
Almost any AM/MW rig will do, but find one you can attach a loop antenna to, or at least a piece of wire. Better yet, go for a SW Rig, HF General Coverage Receiver with an AM band & mode, from 520kHz trough 1710 should cover it. There are stations about every 10kHz in the US. If you have a rig, perhaps a portable, with a Local/DX switch you should flip it to DX. I like portables for MW DX, but I've used the rig I built for a variety of listening applications in MW.
I don't do a lot of LW, but I've gotta get better situated as far as antennas go. Tnen I will do more of that than I have in the past.
One of the nice things to have is a rig with good filtering, or some way of helping you filter out the PLN, QRM and some of the local noise floor. Make sure your station is well grounded and in a area with not too much spurious RF being tossed around by things like computers, computer monitors, home entertainment systems, televisions, etc. and especially in a place where there is not a lot of metal. And, generally the higer you are up in elevation, your chances are greater in success.
Loop antennas are great for DX. I suggest a 5 turn litz wire loop with a half inch spacing between wires on a wooden frame shaped like a plus sign, or a quare turned on one of it's corners. A greater improvement to this is to gimbal this antenna, so you get a 360x360 full sperical movement. Another great loop is a copper pipe loop. Assembled from copper plumbing pipe, type L or M, anywhere from 1/4" to 1" are quite effective. The best one I have found, is made from one (1) single 10 foot piece of pipe, cut into 30" pieces, and then soldered together using four (4) ea. 90deg elbows. You'll also need a torroid of the appropriae size, and the coaxial cable//wire you will be using to connect the loop to your rig. I've got the link to a great example of this. Look for it posted here in this section.
Many AM/MW stations like to hear how far their signals have traveled, as do many of other type stations, so send them a reception report, maybe a short sample recording of their ID transmission, and ask for a QSL card. Some stations don't do QSL's anymore, but call or write to the station engineer and send him/her details about your reception. You'll be surprised! ;-)
I also have felt that a 60-70' copper stranded longwire antenna really works great, even if it's a plastic covered insulated one. But, also a real diople with balun, like the great G5RV antenna is superb for MW.
The MW purists like to use extremely long 100 to 300' beverage antennas. Especially for capturing MW DX from other countries, and tropical MW DX. If you have a great rig capable of the tuning between the 10kHz segments MW band, put up an antenna, and
One thing I have noted that MW signals, when viewed on a panadapter, or spectrum display on a spectrum analyzers that the average signal is 3kHz wide on BOTH sides of the center frequency, for a total of 6kHz. But sometimes you may hear other signals inbetween that 3-6kHz range.. so you need filter and a loop antenna to help you out.
For a great site on Tropical MW DX and also the Flex Radio SDR-1000 on MW try the blog at sdr-1000.blogspot.com
Try it out. Let us know what you hear!
Greg
If I can get it set up right, I will post my log here for people to see. But, from my area in Seattle, WA I've gotten tons of stations in California, Oregon, Washington and places like Billings, MT; Salt Lake City, UT, Denver, Colorado, and various points North, North East and several to the NNW.
Almost any AM/MW rig will do, but find one you can attach a loop antenna to, or at least a piece of wire. Better yet, go for a SW Rig, HF General Coverage Receiver with an AM band & mode, from 520kHz trough 1710 should cover it. There are stations about every 10kHz in the US. If you have a rig, perhaps a portable, with a Local/DX switch you should flip it to DX. I like portables for MW DX, but I've used the rig I built for a variety of listening applications in MW.
I don't do a lot of LW, but I've gotta get better situated as far as antennas go. Tnen I will do more of that than I have in the past.
One of the nice things to have is a rig with good filtering, or some way of helping you filter out the PLN, QRM and some of the local noise floor. Make sure your station is well grounded and in a area with not too much spurious RF being tossed around by things like computers, computer monitors, home entertainment systems, televisions, etc. and especially in a place where there is not a lot of metal. And, generally the higer you are up in elevation, your chances are greater in success.
Loop antennas are great for DX. I suggest a 5 turn litz wire loop with a half inch spacing between wires on a wooden frame shaped like a plus sign, or a quare turned on one of it's corners. A greater improvement to this is to gimbal this antenna, so you get a 360x360 full sperical movement. Another great loop is a copper pipe loop. Assembled from copper plumbing pipe, type L or M, anywhere from 1/4" to 1" are quite effective. The best one I have found, is made from one (1) single 10 foot piece of pipe, cut into 30" pieces, and then soldered together using four (4) ea. 90deg elbows. You'll also need a torroid of the appropriae size, and the coaxial cable//wire you will be using to connect the loop to your rig. I've got the link to a great example of this. Look for it posted here in this section.
Many AM/MW stations like to hear how far their signals have traveled, as do many of other type stations, so send them a reception report, maybe a short sample recording of their ID transmission, and ask for a QSL card. Some stations don't do QSL's anymore, but call or write to the station engineer and send him/her details about your reception. You'll be surprised! ;-)
I also have felt that a 60-70' copper stranded longwire antenna really works great, even if it's a plastic covered insulated one. But, also a real diople with balun, like the great G5RV antenna is superb for MW.
The MW purists like to use extremely long 100 to 300' beverage antennas. Especially for capturing MW DX from other countries, and tropical MW DX. If you have a great rig capable of the tuning between the 10kHz segments MW band, put up an antenna, and
One thing I have noted that MW signals, when viewed on a panadapter, or spectrum display on a spectrum analyzers that the average signal is 3kHz wide on BOTH sides of the center frequency, for a total of 6kHz. But sometimes you may hear other signals inbetween that 3-6kHz range.. so you need filter and a loop antenna to help you out.
For a great site on Tropical MW DX and also the Flex Radio SDR-1000 on MW try the blog at sdr-1000.blogspot.com
Try it out. Let us know what you hear!
Greg