Best DX on a non-DX radio

[gr8oldies]

Ever have a DX station come in on a cheap clock radio, your radio in your coffee maker, cheap portable, or even a "deaf" car radio/stereo?
I remember some nice long tropo hearing a Beckley, WV FM station (I forget which one) carrying a Cincinnati Reds game from Celina, Ohio on the cheapest of clock radios. Truth be told, I did get some decent FM DX, at least some of the stronger Detroit stations, and occasionally, weaker ones. How about you?

 

[KeithE4]

Back in the '70s, before the new western stations (KBOI, KDWN, KOH, and KDXU, respectively) drowned them out, the Big 4 Chicago stations (WMAQ, WGN, WBBM, and WLS) were audible on my portable radio on winter nights in Phoenix. Now, if any, it's just WBBM.

EDIT: Upon further review, 780 in Reno was KCRL at the time, not KOH (or KKOH). I don't remember hearing anything on 780 but WBBM in those days, though.

 

[boombox4]

I was able to get WWL and WSM on a 3 band, standard issue Japanese portable when I as a kid in the late 70s. it wasn't common, but it I heard each station more than once. Barefoot, as I didn't even know what a loop antenna was. The Penney's multibander isn't a TRF model, but the loopstick is decent. That's probably why I was able to get those catches.

 

[Radionys]

That's how I got started in DXing. Back in the mid 60s my parents got a portable radio shaped like a world globe as a gift. They set it up on the mantle on top of the fireplace and turned it on to try it out. To my surprise out comes "this is WWL New Orleans". I am in NY. This was a radio with an analog tuner (being the 60s) and I had to try and find it again. Along the way I found many more stations. I didn't find WWL again until I got White's Radio Log later on.

 

[kevtronics]

I found an unassuming late '70s Fisher (made by Sanyo) casseiver with an amazingly sensitive and selective AM tuner:

And in the early '80s, GE made some boomboxes with the same tuner circuitry as the much-heralded Superadio.

 

[awsherrill]

Don't know if it counts, but...I had a cheap clock radio that was terribly prone to image interference. It was fairly common to hear airline pilots talking to Atlanta ATC as they passed overhead.

At about the same time during my teenage youth, I had one of those cheapy-cheap multiband radios that could be found at any five-and-dime type store (brands like "Juliette" and "Soundesign"). This radio included a slice of HF spectrum, 4-12 MHz as I recall.

At some point I figured out how to kludge up a BFO using a separate AM pocket radio, and I had a grand old time listening to hams on 80 meters on this el-cheapo rig. This was back when there was a class of younger hams on the band that liked to talk about fairly subversive subject matter, and it could be truly interesting to listen to. Still have recordings of some of it.

 

[Miss Tuned]

A few years ago (2012-13 or thereabouts) I was sitting on a train home from work, listening to radio on a cheap Sony Ericsson cellphone with just the headphone cord as an antenna. I was tuned to a local station on 95.3.

There was a Sporadic-E opening at the time, and as I was listening, the local station disappeared and for about ten minutes I was able to clearly listen to Radio Beograd 1 in stereo with RDS, from Belgrade, Serbia over 1,100 miles away. I've had Es catches over the years before and since, but nothing quite like that - receiving such a distant signal so clearly on such a poor receiver/antenna in such mediocre reception conditions (i.e. the train).

 

[cyberdad]

One of the earliest experiences that opened the door to DXing for me was as a 13 year old kid hearing WBZ on a cheap tuner that was incorporated with a portable record player. This was at a family member's home in a Chicago residential neighborhood.

 

[Harvey_Dogg]

I was just 12 years old when Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In made a joke about The Voice of Cuba. So I went upstairs and tuned in that strong Spanish speaking station. And it said, This is the Voice of Cuba from Havana Cuba. Free Territory in the America's. Of course the ID was in Spanish. I was in Richmond, Indiana and became a dedicated DXer after receiving Cuba on 640 AM.

Then I discovered by turning the radio 90 degrees, I could hear KFI from LA.

 

[Harvey_Dogg]

In 1970, my family moved to Springfield, Ohio. I was surprised that WNAP from Indianapolis came in on cheap radios most mornings and evenings. They were 50 KW and 140 miles away.

 

[Battenkill50]

WRNO 99.5 New Orleans (for 10 seconds in the daytime) while on vacation in the Poconos....(1999)

KTW

 

[r388yh]

Don't know if it counts, but...I had a cheap clock radio that was terribly prone to image interference.

I had a similar experience as a teenager. My older brother had a GE clock radio that I sometimes used for AM listening. Occasionally it would pick up Voice Of America complete with Yankee Doodle ID signature tune. Clearly this was some kind of image from the shortwave bands. Years later, I reasoned that it was probably due to the blockbuster-strength VOA signal (likely from Bethany, OH) mixing with a harmonic of the radio’s local oscillator, resulting in a signal at the 455 kHz IF that went on to be demodulated and sent to the speaker. That’s the magic of radio!

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

Wonderful, thought-provoking and nostalgic post, gr8oldies !
Earliest DX I can remember getting was off a small GE radio. I don't remember it having a clock, though. It was remarkably similar to the one on top of the Cunningham fridge in Happy Days.
Things like WBBM Chcago and CBA Moncton were among the appetizers,
After a while, I even started getting comfortable determining the actual exact frequencies' positions on it -- even on the crowded 120-140-160 jam-up .
* * * * *
The best unlikely DX wasn't barefoot, though. It arrived after I'd built an NRC loop. That snatch was off a small transistor radio that I laid on the top rungs of the 4-foot loop. With a turn of the variable capacitor, in boomed previously unheard WELV 1370 from the Catskills one early morning.
* * * * *
Our Hamilton Beach kitchen can-opener/radio, which came with the house, is always tuned to 860, for French CJBC's Christmas Eve fare, hi.

 

[CCBInMI]

One of the earliest tropo catches I can remember was on an ordinary GE Clock Radio, about 1990. I pulled in CJRT 91.1 Toronto from the northern Detroit suburbs. Later when I started DXing in earnest, I discovered this clock radio was more powerful than I thought - it could pull in Columbus and Toronto (on AM) during the day. Had no luck with it in my college dorm room in Grand Rapids some years later, though.

 

[jim-satx]

When I was 10, my parents gave me a yellow Panasonic Toot-a-Loop radio for Christmas. I'd recently become interested in Top 40 music, and I listened to it a lot on locals KTSA and KONO with that radio.

One night at my grandmother's house I decided to spin the dial on the Toot-a-Loop, and I was surprised at all of the stations I was getting. I stopped on one of them and heard the announcer say it was WHO in Des Moines, Iowa. It amazed me that I was picking up a signal from hundreds of miles away. That sparked my interest in DXing. (I wish that I hadn't abandoned DXing during my college years, but I'm happy I returned to it eight years ago.)

 

[boombox4]

GEs apparently have a rep for good AM radios, even the non-DX oriented models. I have a GE boombox from 1985 that -- when it is working; as the switches are funky -- tunes and DXes almost as good as a Superadio. Massive loopstick inside.

As for more recent use of non-DX radios used in DXing, in 2012-2013 or so I nightly used a Sony Walkman, model # passes me right now... With a loop I heard all sorts of stuff, including an unID station out of Mexico on 800. Probably the one in Juarez, but I didn't get enough to ID.

I love DXing on regular equipment. All you need is a loop, really. And some creative use of it to increase the selectivity.

 

[gr8oldies]

GEs apparently have a rep for good AM radios, even the non-DX oriented models. I have a GE boombox from 1985 that -- when it is working; as the switches are funky -- tunes and DXes almost as good as a Superadio. Massive loopstick inside.

As for more recent use of non-DX radios used in DXing, in 2012-2013 or so I nightly used a Sony Walkman, model # passes me right now... With a loop I heard all sorts of stuff, including an unID station out of Mexico on 800. Probably the one in Juarez, but I didn't get enough to ID.

I love DXing on regular equipment. All you need is a loop, really. And some creative use of it to increase the selectivity.

There's a thrift store in the Dayton, Ohio area that sometimes would get old GE portable radios in. They DXed fine. I also used several Sony Walkman (and Panasonic equivalent) that brought some good DX in. With some amplification they could have been even better.

 

[Harvey_Dogg]

My biggest DX surprises on a cheap FM radio were likely once in a lifetime events. On a summer afternoon in the 1970's, the FM dial was full of stations from Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico too. I was in Indiana.

Then one evening in 1980 in Springfield Ohio, the FM dial was full of stations from Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia..

Here in the Midwest skip from Texas and Florida happens almost every year. But the two above DX events are very rare.

 

[tvnut]

There's a thrift store in the Dayton, Ohio area that sometimes would get old GE portable radios in. They DXed fine. I also used several Sony Walkman (and Panasonic equivalent) that brought some good DX in. With some amplification they could have been even better.

I have an old Radio Shack pocket AM-FM radio, and setting it down by the Tecsun loop turns it into a DX machine. Don't do it often, but with careful tuning of both and good conditions, it can separate out WOR from local WGN and WABC from local WBBM in the evening. Even in daytime, it'll help with more distant stations close to locals at the top end of the band.

 

[boombox4]

There's a thrift store in the Dayton, Ohio area that sometimes would get old GE portable radios in. They DXed fine. I also used several Sony Walkman (and Panasonic equivalent) that brought some good DX in. With some amplification they could have been even better.

GEs and Sonys seem to do really well. I have several Sony Walkmen (all thrift store purchases) and although they're not all great by themselves (a couple of them are reasonably good DXers alone), a loop really brings out the performance. And the sound is usually pretty good on the headphones.

It's fun to DX with something like that.