AM/FM radio

Can you clarify if you mean a car radio or a portable type?

Cheers

G'day Duncan, we use an Alpine in the Karavan for it's good AM reception, in the evenings especially. Have been very pleased with a Sangean battery radio for use for late, overnight for a wakeful hour or outside. We have a VMS in the car for other capabilities, but I have been relatively pleased with it's AM reception too, though while driving talking books are fantastic away from radio reception.

I find that car electronics tend to interfere with AM quite a bit

I posted a very similar thread last year ...check out this in the archives and in particular the answer from "Gone Bush" reply 9 of 9 the thread # is 70729

I reckon Gone Bush was right on the mark about diminished power...years ago the abc was received anywhere and everywhere now they all think we live on the edge of towns and can get the local Fm !

I have since installed a new Kenwood system (multi purpose..but certainly the radio is performing better remotely on the standard antennea) and whilst doing so I added a "Y" piece in line for the normal car radio aerial. This allows me to unplug the normal aerial (access at feet level tucked away..no need to pull the radio out) and this lead goes to a large detachable whip aerial on the bull bar which I use for am reception when out of range.

Has increased my abilty to receive am to way above the factory fitted radio and aerial

Cheers

Gday DW
I am also wondering about the radio in my vehicle. Have things changed now that we are digital?
Murray

Only a couple of weeks ago we were travelling from the mid north coast to Sydney and My wife commented that we used to be able to put the radio on the ABC and have interrupted reception all the way to Brisbane. Now we had trouble getting any reception between Taree and Newcastle. Same car same Radio, we put it down to a problem with the radio, but it seems it may be a radio transmission issue.

I note a couple of comments re reduced power of stations but this is not the case.

Rather what has happened over the years is that radios have been made less sensitive which makes them less prone to interference from the increasing level of general radio noise.

My first radio design job was designing Astor diamond dot cars radios and in the 60's these would not be allowed to leave the factory in South Melbourne unless they could pick up 1 microvolt - > by the time Australian manufacturing was scrapped in the late 80's they only had to pick up 14mircovolt.

Additional the fitting of antenna's in the rear windows etc causes a loss of signal if used of the AM band of about 10db (90%).

Short of finding an old Holden, the best you can do is go to a wreckers etc and get a radio out of a GQ Nissan patrol or similar - some even came with short wave.

The catch is that there are many more stations these days and it is common to find that with a sensitive radio you pick up two stations a long way away but on the same channel.

Last suggestion - try this and you may be surpized at how well it works.

Just get a long piece of wire with a clip etc , and clip it to top of existing car aeria and run it out a few meters.

If you get a really long piece of wire (10-20m ) you can run it out in different directions and hence optimize the pickup between interferring stations.l

Hi DW,
I have bought a couple of Pioneer car radios from Ebay and cannot find fault with the purchase or the radios. It probably does not matter which brand you get thee days as Robin Miller has said, none are as sensitive as they used to be.

I have stuck with the Pioneer brand only because they used to be good. I say used to be good because only because I have had not bad experiences with the current models and it may be a little early to give a definitive opinion as yet.

Current units feature a digitized tuning system which, once enacted starts thing called BSM (best station memory) and locks the stonger stations in first where ever you are at the time. You have to press the BSM button whenever you run out of range of the stations you are currently tuned into.

There are several brands that are worth having and they all use the same method in one way or another. Pleased with the Pioneer but not wrapped in the digitized tuning though it works well but you don't have as much control over the tuning process.

Hope this helps.
Cheers, Bruce.