The PERFECT Radio of Today

[K6JHU]

BTW, KXA of the early 60's was a great station. A broad mix of classical, jazz, and standards mixed togehter in one playlist (not separate programs).

 

[BobOnTheJob]

The perfect radio of today would be any radio capable of listening to the AM band the way it was in the 60s with lots of clear channel stations and a lot less clutter.

No price would be too great to pay for that radio sir!

I still have the radio I used, a Zenith Trans Oceanic. I'm afraid if I turn it on now it will sound like all the other radios today.

I wish I still had the Zenith console radio with the tuning eye that I heard KOB 770 on in Cincinnati the evening that WABC was off the air because of the 1965 blackout. I got a bad report card and dad took the radio away from me until I got the next report card. The radio didn't work after that and my 12 year old mentality junked it. Hindsight....

 

[nd2023]

Display the exact field strength of the received signal, and a way to calibrate the field strength meter.

For a portable radio:
Full integration with a smartphone
HD capability using Internet streaming as a backup for when the HD drops out.
As sensitive and selective as my Sony XDRF1HD
Automatically logging DX with recordings
E-skip alerting when a station suddenly appears on a blank frequency
Week long battery life
Calibrated field strength meter and direction finder (useful for hunting down pirates)
Automatically switch the station if certain songs or commercials air (that has to be manually enabled so that it doesn't screw me out of DX)
Sirius XM reception
DTV audio reception
Record 100 frequencies or Internet streams at once and a terabyte of storage

Of course, I'd love it if every station had the benefits of HD without the IBUZ.
I'd have to say FM Buddy is the closest thing we have on the software side and the Sony XDRF1HD is the closest thing we have on the hardware side.

 

[Tom Wells]

One thing missing from most radios is something I had to design into one I built in 2000:

An IF stage that can be run right up to the point of oscillation while remaining stable.
This gives a hard-to-comprehend yet amazing boost to sensitivity while sharpening up selectvity,
a built in Q-Multiplier.

Variable IF from 100 Hz for CW reception, up to 25 khz for hi-fi AM detection.
I'd add tunable audio notch filters to the wish list...what else...
Multiple, phase-able ferrite bar antennas with antenna trimmer cap fine tuning.
Thes would be ball and socket mounted to permit tuning of any angle, not just horizontal.

Adjustable impulse noise blanking, DSP noise blanking for 50 or 60 hz noise sources.

Selectable different detectors. Sometimes a passive detector or active detector works better than another.
Passive decoders load down the tuned curcuit, active detectors do not.

Same for FM....selectable detector types, let the user decide which detector behavior works best for each signal
and situation.

 

[crainbebo]

"E-skip alerting when a station suddenly appears on a blank frequency"

I'd like that too! A male computerized voice coming on and saying "E-SKIP TO 93 MHZ...I AM PICKING UP ARIZONA AND NEW MEXICO ON LOW BAND...LOG NOW!" ;D

-crainbebo

 

[radioman148]

The perfect radio of today would be any radio capable of listening to the AM band the way it was in the 60s with lots of clear channel stations and a lot less clutter.

No price would be too great to pay for that radio sir!

I wish I could've tape recorded my DX conquests of the 60s so we could go back and listen to them now.
The only recordings I saved are of various stations signing off on Monday mornings for maintenance.

 

[FreddyE1977]

I got a bad report card and dad took the radio away from me until I got the next report card.

wow, I thought I was the only person that had happened to. ;D

 

[BobOnTheJob]

The perfect radio of today would be any radio capable of listening to the AM band the way it was in the 60s with lots of clear channel stations and a lot less clutter.

No price would be too great to pay for that radio sir!

I wish I could've tape recorded my DX conquests of the 60s so we could go back and listen to them now.
The only recordings I saved are of various stations signing off on Monday mornings for maintenance.

I recorded every FM station's ID that I picked up in the early 1970's. Tape #1 sadly is lost--it had all the local and semi-local stuff on it. Tape 2 had more distant DX on it--I still have it. FM DXer Andy Bolin of Charleston,IL has posted nearly 2000 FM ID's going back 42 years at http://dx.bobandtanya.com/ . If blasts from the past interest you, pull up a chair...you may be there for a spell.

 

[kenglish]

I have one of those old (1979-80) Pioneer TV Sound Tuners sitting on the floor at home. I think I might just hook it up, and use it to monitor audio from the low-VHF channels, for e-skip, this summer.
It's got individual buttons for the VHF channels, so it's easy to "punch" across them.

 

[cd637299]

I have one of those old (1979-80) Pioneer TV Sound Tuners sitting on the floor at home. I think I might just hook it up, and use it to monitor audio from the low-VHF channels, for e-skip, this summer.
It's got individual buttons for the VHF channels, so it's easy to "punch" across them.

Good as those might be (and I won't question, since I never owned that model), during E-skip, your analog TV is still your best friend. Often you will see *one* channel while hearing *another*---no such animal with the audio tuner only! Also I have seen a picture without audio ever materializing.

That being said, personally I wish I had one of those TV-audio tuners meant for the car (Autoplay I think it was called); that mighta been fun during E-skip season....but then again, I wouldn't be keeping my eyes on the road, like I ought.

cd

 

[Darth_vader]

"Full touch-screen readout and a selection of customisable coloured lighted backgrounds and eye-pleasing fonts (also with customisable colors.) Add a customisable space for image display, or add your own images. Include a full web browser with Shockwave FLash, downloading capability and touch-screen keyboard. Again, everything at high speed and automatically updating."

The prefect radio of to-day would certainly include none of that, if it was to have any hope of ever being considered for inclusion in my arsenal. The perfect radio of to-day would, without question, include an SCA/SAP demodulator and continuous coverage from DC up to at least 40 GHz! It would also include an "expansion bus", fully compatible with analogue and digital signals and built on a non-proprietary ISO and IEEE-standardised connection interface, for connecting external demodulation/decoding/display equipment as new technologies and concepts become available (e.g. once Ibiquity's patents run out and everybody and their dog starts including IBAC decoders in anything and everything. Hey, it'll probably happen one of these days.) And it would include a CD player that also plays back MP2/3 files.

But like someone else said, a software-defined radio apparatus combined with a laptop would probably satisfy most, if not all these requirements!

 

[nd2023]

I got a bad report card and dad took the radio away from me until I got the next report card.

wow, I thought I was the only person that had happened to. ;D

These days parents would take their kid's iPod away and give them a radio instead for a bad report card.

 

[vchimpanzee]

I got a bad report card and dad took the radio away from me until I got the next report card.

wow, I thought I was the only person that had happened to. ;D

These days parents would take their kid's iPod away and give them a radio instead for a bad report card.

How about AM radio as a punishment? This wouldn't work in a market with Radio Disney, which doesn't seem to be on FM anywhere.

I'm curious as to why the perfect AM radio would go up to 1800. Only frequencies up to 1700 have been authorized.