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New coverage maps at Radio-Locator

hawaiigar said:
The conductivity of the salt water is underestimated to a certain degree, IMO.
Click to expand...

I agree. Now that the new R-L maps are up and give us the ability to zoom in or out. I can think of a number of examples where stations are audible along a coastline a hundred or more miles from where R-L shows the predicted outer limit of coverage to be. KCTA is one such instance. It's audible (if only barely) with a good radio on beaches at St. Petersburg and Pensacola midday, although R-L suggests the outer extent of the salt water path signal should be nowhere near either location.

And, gar, as for your battery issue.... Do you have a Dollar Tree store near your location? You can get four AA or AAA alkaline batteries for a buck. They're off-brand (Sunbeam), but in my experience, they're comparable to the name brand batteries in terms of the number of hours you can get from them. C and D batteries are two for a buck. They also have zinc-carbon batteries that are pretty good. Otherwise, I agree with Mario on the rechargables. Make sure you get two sets of batteries. Rotate the two sets with one in the radio and the other in the charger. Initial investment will probably be somewhere between $10-20.
 
MarioMania said:
Get some Rechargables, I have it for my Radios AA's and C's
Click to expand...

Mario, think about this for a minute.

The Sangean PR-D5 radio takes six C cells, which sell in multipacks for about $1.00 per battery ($10.00 to $12.00 per pack of 12 alkalines).

A set of six rechargeable C's is going to be about ten times more than a regular battery (about $10.00 for a pack of two) ...plus a charger at somewhere in the $17.00 to $20.00 range.

The poster says he doesn't have the batteries. Given the reasonable price on alkalines, I'm gathering he doesn't have $10.00 to spare at the moment, much less $80.00.

Not a great piece of advice, sir.
 
According to this thread, the OP just moved to Hawaii at the beginning of the month.

Maybe he has too many moving expenses to be spending money on batteries right away.

This thread is now getting horribly off-topic, because of your side comments which I've now had to take time to reply to, twice (and I'm becoming very sorry that I did).

I'm sure anyone who has a battery-powered radio used for DXing knows where to buy batteries, in any event.
 
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cyberdad said:
I agree. Now that the new R-L maps are up and give us the ability to zoom in or out. I can think of a number of examples where stations are audible along a coastline a hundred or more miles from where R-L shows the predicted outer limit of coverage to be. KCTA is one such instance. It's audible (if only barely) with a good radio on beaches at St. Petersburg and Pensacola midday, although R-L suggests the outer extent of the salt water path signal should be nowhere near either location.

And, gar, as for your battery issue.... Do you have a Dollar Tree store near your location? You can get four AA or AAA alkaline batteries for a buck. They're off-brand (Sunbeam), but in my experience, they're comparable to the name brand batteries in terms of the number of hours you can get from them. C and D batteries are two for a buck. They also have zinc-carbon batteries that are pretty good. Otherwise, I agree with Mario on the rechargables. Make sure you get two sets of batteries. Rotate the two sets with one in the radio and the other in the charger. Initial investment will probably be somewhere between $10-20.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion of the dollar stores.

I just looked with Google and there's a similar one in Hilo called ACR Dollar Plus.

Many things here are more expensive than on the mainland and good batteries aren't cheap anywhere.

Thanks!
 
hawaiigar said:
I've always wondered if KFI can be heard at all in the daytime in Hawaii because I've read a report once of WQAM MIami being heard in the daytime up in Newfoundland, Canada which is around 2,000 miles.
Click to expand...

I believe the Newfoundland reception was accomplished using a Beverage antenna. The gain on those antennae is considerable and the DXers using them would run them right to water's edge, generally over rocky or sandy low-conductivity land.

That type of reception is certainly not what the radio-locator site is supposed to show. The contours are quite specific, but we all know that with good equipment in the right place, a DXer can often achieve the improbable.

And Schroedinger's Cat brings up the good point that some daytime long distance reception is daytime skywave. I once got 4VEH in Cleveland, OH, around noon... Haiti to Cleveland is 1,300 miles and at 10 kw at 1035 kHz not a bad catch even at night.
 
MarioMania said:
Please don't buy Sunbeams or any $1 battery gar

If you DX or even listen to the Radio, Cheap Batteries are not for you
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I've been listening to battery-operated radios for some 50 years and have used the cheapest batteries I can find for most of them. Upside: I have saved a lot of money. Downside: I can't find one.

This isn't like using cheap audio or video cassettes back in the day, when sound or picture quality would be inferior or would degrade rapidly. A radio operating on $1 batteries sounds just as good as one operating on $5 ones.
 
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MarioMania said:
Please don't buy Sunbeams or any $1 battery gar

If you DX or even listen to the Radio, Cheap Batteries are not for you
Click to expand...

I've used Sunbeams with DX radios. They will last a while if you use headphones -- especially an all analog radio like a Superadio.

May not last as long on a PR-D5 as with other radios, though (digital radio with fairly powerful AF chip).

I've had cheap C cells in my PR-D5 last as long as a week or two.

I used Sunbeams in my PR-D5 at least once. They lasted maybe a week? Two weeks? It was a while ago. On headphones. Switch the radio off, the batteries recharge a little on their own -- you get a little more use out of them.

Alkalines on my PR-D5 last 3 weeks to a month, depending on use.

But, like I said, I always use headphones for DXing. Especially with the PR-D5, which almost puts out a watt through its speakers -- much less through its headphone jack.
 
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cyberdad said:
I can think of a number of examples where stations are audible along a coastline a hundred or more miles from where R-L shows the predicted outer limit of coverage to be. KCTA is one such instance. It's audible (if only barely) with a good radio on beaches at St. Petersburg and Pensacola midday, although R-L suggests the outer extent of the salt water path signal should be nowhere near either location.
Click to expand...

I think there might be some misunderstanding of just what the R-L maps show. The outer contour is 100 uv/m, a kind of weak signal, but the signal doesn't just "stop" there. It keeps going getting weaker and weaker as it goes. Now a typical consumer radio will have trouble producing listenable audio from a 100 uv/m signal, but any decent DX rig should do 25 uv/m or even weaker (another 6 to 10 db), assuming there isn't interference from another co-channel or adjacent-channel station.
I like the new R-L maps, especially the zoom. They are just approximations however, especially over land-paths, as the M-3 data is not all that great.
 
It's actually 150 uV/m, but with M-3 inaccuracies, you may be getting much less. I agree that with a good DX radio you can get MEASURED signals as weak as 15 uV/m. Most FI meters measure down to 10 uV/m, but the audio level and readability is marginal at best for a signal like that.
 
I'm just helping him out & saving Money at the sametime

Why does people don't get it, Ok do what ever you want, Keep wasting Money on Batteries, I'm done here
 
Sorry, K.M., for beating this dead battery issue.

I ran into this sale a year ago at the Radio Shack here at the mall -- buy one multi-pack of batteries and get one pack of any other size free. So I splurged. We have a number of battery clocks and flashlights throughout the house, along with a plastic cookie jar that, when the lid is opened, plays 'Surfin USA'.

But those super-special R-S batteries didn't prove to be that potent. I had to ditch three of their AA ones from a wall clock just today. In their place is now three from an unopened pack of the Energizer ones. Over the years I've tended to lean toward those types of batteries perfected by baseball great Al Kaline, irrespective of brand.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.
 
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