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My new am antenna :) but a question..

J

jras20

All this time I didnt know there was at least a 100' of twin line wire up in my acttic, I pulled it out and hooked it on to my reciever for am antenna, it works great! The only real problem with it is WOAI is so strong here on every other "dead" area on the am dial I can hear WOAI. and on the weaker stations. Is there any kind of way I can filter that out or not?
Thanks in advance!
J
<P ID="signature">______________
jras20</P>
 
Bruce Carter ... help here ... see below

Bruce Wayne does not know electronics ... even 101.

But Bruce Carter does.

He will be along shortly.

Well, I don't really know if he is short, but he is smart :).


> All this time I didnt know there was at least a 100' of
> twin line wire up in my acttic, I pulled it out and hooked
> it on to my reciever for am antenna, it works great! The
> only real problem with it is WOAI is so strong here on every
> other "dead" area on the am dial I can hear WOAI. and on
> the weaker stations. Is there any kind of way I can filter
> that out or not?
> Thanks in advance!
> J
 
Re: Bruce Carter ... help here ... see below

> But Bruce Carter does.
>
> He will be along shortly.
>
> Well, I don't really know if he is short, but he is smart
> :).

Thanks for the compliment - it sounds like your receiver design is less than optimum. Retrofitting it to correct problems may be more trouble than it is worth - a trip to a Radio Shack to get a GE Superradio 3 may be quicker and cheaper.

I see this a lot on new cheap radios based on a "receiver on an IC" design. Such radios usually have one ceramic filter for IF on AM, and one for FM. The ultimate noise floor for a single ceramic filter is only 40 or 50 dB down, so they are prone to overload if you put a strong signal into them.

The way to solve it is to put in more AM ceramic filters. The easiest way to that is to buy one of those wireless mice, and scavenge the ceramic filter out of it. More than likely, it is a three stage stagger tuned filter from Murata in a black case with five pins. Three of them are ground, one is input, the other output. Because it is a three stage filter, it will have a noise floor way lower than a single filter. Because it is stagger tuned, it is relatively wideband, which means the selectivity will not be great on adjacents, but you will get broadband sound and reasonable alternate channel selectivity.

Not all wireless mice have the same ceramic filter, and you might end up paying $25 or $30 and not getting the filter you need - there is a new technology from Texas Instruments (shameless plug) that doesn't use an AM ceramic filter at all. That is why the safest bet is to just get a decent radio to begin with. If you already have a good AM radio like an SR-3, sorry to tell you but it is defective.
 
Re: Bruce Carter ... help here ... see below

Thanks for taking the time to reply, I was thinking about getting a super radio, but havnt got around to it, I'd like to get something a little smaller to take along on boat fishing trips etc. I saw at amazon they have a smaller version of the super radio, I'm not sure how much better it does, but its small, I was looking into something like that, but havnt decided on what to get yet. For the most part that wired antenna works fairly good, but nighttime I cant get that much, one thing that wired antenna beats over the other one I had, when I turned on the TV it doesnt make as much static as that other one did. I wanted to be able to listen to the base ball games through the radio but nighttime reception is pretty bad. I can recieve kvet-am ok but to many other stations bleed over to it.
<P ID="signature">______________
jras20</P>
 
Re: Bruce Carter ... help here ... see below

> I saw at amazon they have a smaller
> version of the super radio,

There are no smaller versions available. If it isn't a GE Superadio 3, it won't have the good AM section. Don't be fooled by "similar items". I was fooled - once - by somebody saying that. The radio was a clunker. Genuine GE SR-3 is available from Amazon or Radio Shack.
 
Re: Bruce Carter ... help here ... see below

> > I saw at amazon they have a smaller
> > version of the super radio,
>
> There are no smaller versions available. If it isn't a GE
> Superadio 3, it won't have the good AM section. Don't be
> fooled by "similar items". I was fooled - once - by
> somebody saying that. The radio was a clunker. Genuine GE
> SR-3 is available from Amazon or Radio Shack.
>

Thanks! I gues I learned another thing, I think Mike said something about that a while back when I was looking into them radios, I may half to order me one, I just wish they had a smaller version of them. Thanks again for all the infomation, it was very helpfull!
<P ID="signature">______________
jras20</P>
 
Question ... re: SR-3

Are the earlier versions of the Superadio better than the "3" assuming you can find one?


> > > I saw at amazon they have a smaller
> > > version of the super radio,
> >
> > There are no smaller versions available. If it isn't a GE
>
> > Superadio 3, it won't have the good AM section. Don't be
> > fooled by "similar items". I was fooled - once - by
> > somebody saying that. The radio was a clunker. Genuine
> GE
> > SR-3 is available from Amazon or Radio Shack.
> >
>
> Thanks! I gues I learned another thing, I think Mike said
> something about that a while back when I was looking into
> them radios, I may half to order me one, I just wish they
> had a smaller version of them. Thanks again for all the
> infomation, it was very helpfull!
>
 
Re: Question ... re: SR-3

> Are the earlier versions of the Superadio better than the
> "3" assuming you can find one?

I assume that with volume manufacturing, there are differences in quality, workmanship, and alignment. Very early versions had the speaker wires reversed - and the sensitivity was bad. Reverse the wires, and they work.

Inside, it is a huge ferrite bar - wound the whole length to maximize flux into the front end, three gangs (tuned RF stage). Sadly it employs a converter stage and not a separate oscillator and mixer - perhaps GE solved the noise problems that causes. And a four stage IF (no ceramic filter surprisingly). That adds up to a darn sensitive AM radio if you align it properly. And that is the basis, I think, of the differing experiences people are having with it. There have been complaints of dial marking way off, performance poorer than the SR-2, etc. All are solved with a decent alignment. My 3 is way more sensitive than the 2 - selectivity out of the box is poorer, though, but GE seems to have implemented some engineering changes that solve that issue. Maybe even based on my tweaking of a couple of resistor values that I published on the web. Now, my 3 is a portable DX machine. In fact - almost too selective and sensitive.
 
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