Car Radios AM/FM versus Digital

What he said..!

I have read that window tint film can cause poor reception from in glass antennas.

the Radio Australia site in Shepparton is now a delapidated old wreck of a place
some of the antennas have been pulled down but there is still a couple of antennas still standing ,a sad piece of aussie history
cheers mechpete

The "metallised" tint does cause antenna problems if applied to the glass with the antenna. The normal stuff is okay :)

"Seeking and searching a radio which performs would fulfill your footy needs."

This year, going for Richmond/Adelaide would also have helped.

Cheers
Greg

Richmond hasn't won a final one since the early 80's so their frequency is not very strong.

I think you are confusing signal strength with signal frequency, varies with conditions...they are on channel, so stay tuned :)

Cheers
Greg

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Yes Bob, manufacturers make what the market will purchase and there are few demands for high sensitivity 'outback' radios compared to the market for all-singing, all-dancing models with multi-function connectivity options.
We have seen the end of the early Ferris, Eurovox and the like. That age has passed.

Several years back I bought a Degen DE1103 all-band 'World Receiver' that came with a 20m light cable to extend its whip antenna. It worked, but has not been used for the last couple of years. Too much trouble, and anyway, I travel to get away from 'civilisation', yes even Grand Finals! (I know, I know, leave me under my rock)

Allan
It's not only the footy finals.
Almost exactly nine years ago I was working on a nature survey at Neale Junction in the Great Victoria Desert.
It was the height of the GFC and I think I was the only person in the camp with a shortwave. I would listen at lunchtime for the news on how much the markets were falling.
I couple of my fellow workers were well heeled retirees with a lot of investments and the news wasn't good for them. After a couple of days they stopped asking.
That's one benefit of remote travel. Sometimes it's better not to know what is going on in the world.

Yep, not much point in knowing if you can't do anything about it.

Like the GFC, I can't do anything about the Footy GF outcome either! lol

We had a Ferris car radio in our car when we got married in 1971.

It was able to be pulled out of its cradle and taken inside.

It had its own internal battery and a fold out antenna.

At night we could pick up 6WF (ABC in Perth) inside our flat in Sydney.

Yeah, still got one of those, Gone Bush. I don't chuck anything away! :-)

Bob

Can you put up a photo please Bob?

Here you go, Gone Bush.





Bob

Yep, that's it.

Beats modern radios hands down.

Too true, G B, and handy as a door stop in windy weather too. :-)

A short Ferris story: In 1980, I spied a Ferris car radio, AM only, and no push button tuning, in KMart, Mt Isa, and at $19.95 was too good a bargain to pass up. Fitted it to our old HJ45 work ute, they had a radio insert but no radio in the late '70's, coupled to one of those "cool" fibreglass aerials that were very common in that era, and worked well........for a time.

We were living on a station just north of Urandangie, and with this Ferris radio, we were never short of something to listen to, both ABC & commercial. A bloke used to cart cattle off the station and he'd just bought a new Mack V8 Superliner, with 3 trailers, and amongst the options he had fitted was an expensive Jensen stereo system.

We were all at the workshop one morning, our Toyota, his Superliner, and plenty of "toons" coming out of the speaker in the HJ45, and the Superliner was mute. When he found out what I paid for the Ferris, and the different stations it could reach, he was really p!ssed after paying heaps for the Jensen unit, which couldn't pick up anything, except in town.

Bob

Hi Bob,
I had one similar to yours, had it fitted to a 66 Toyota that I owned at the time, always found it to be a bit of a compromise, not that good as a car radio and not that much better as a portable, sold it to some ringer that was working at the same place at the time and fitted a TEN radio (Japanese), which was very good and replaced the portable side of it with a Phillips long Range which was excellent but no longer with me unfortunately, lost in a move somewhere. Don't know how you have succeeded in still having yours intact.
Cheers Ian.

Don't remember too many negatives about the Ferris, Ian, other than its weight, and in the early '70's, the lack of a cassette player. Some of those long range models were/are quiet efficient. I had a Sony 4 band unit that worked well in the Kimberley. Still got it too! :-)

Probably still got the Ferris because I'm a "bower bird".

Bob

Main problem that I remember was that it wouldn't stay on the station, vibrations used to keep shaking it off frequency, then would take a few minutes to get it back, was a real pain that way. Also didn't have the station pulling ability of the TEN
Cheers Ian

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Besides what Bantam said about old radios, for best performance you had to grind the valves regularly. lol

Bantam. I think your observations are correct. A good antenna and low loss cable are key. I looked into this some time ago and nearly all decent AM radios have similar sensitivity these days. There is probably a 10 cent AM FM chip that they all use LOL.

Sadly the ABC stopped broadcasting Short Wave in Australia and Radio Australia. Another victim of the internet and funding. It's slim pickings for SW radio these days.

As to Digital radio, it is great as an alternative to AM in Melbourne when near a tram line, but hopeless for pretty much else. The quality of DAB+ is way lower than FM with less range in Australia sadly.

I can say for sure that good low loss coax is an issue.
Much of the commercially supplied coax on consumer radio product is not real flash .... the shielding is poor and the loss in practice could be better.

A few years ago I replaced the coax on a 6db elevated feed aerial with some frankly modest coax off a roll, and found the the reception on UHF CB was significantly better ....and I tested it 3 ways to sunday.

With the same length of factory fitted coax on an identical areial on the same position on the same radio I could not crack the mountain view repeater from my southside location ..... but with new coax I could ...... I then replaced the coax on the unmolested aerial and found it to would crack the repeater.

the coax on am/fm car radio antennas is a lower spec product than you would find on transmission product ...... so some good low loss well shielded product would be worthwhile.

While the quoted sensitivity figures may be very similar on most modern car radios, one asks a couple of questions .....

1/ is that a measured figure or a design figure .. or worse an exagerated figure like the power output.

2/ noise figures most definitely come into play here ..... and the car radio is not a complete system, in that the power supply is derived from the car ...... the quality of the power supply will have a major influence on performance.

The wiring in most cars is the absolute minimum to function and the factory car radio supply cables are bundled with all sorts of other wiring carrying all sorts of interferance.

I have a 6mm2 power feed directly from the battery supplying some of my in dash electronics, it will supply a good strong clean supply to my radio so it has a chance of performing to the spec printed.

Then there is the factory aerial .... apart from mostly pretty ordinary design, most car aerials are low mounted and close to the engine bay and all the electrical noise that comes from there.

my aerial is mounted high and behind the cab, the aerial cable goes nowhere near the engine bay and has pretty fair seperation from most if not all other under dash wiring.

I doubt that any of these measures alone would yeild the improvments, but all together do make a significant difference

worth thinking about

cheers

For those of us with HF radio, it can be used to listen to AM broadcast as well as yakking.

Many times I have tuned in to the ABC via HF when the car radio was deaf.