HFU HF Underground
Technical Topics => Equipment => Topic started by: Matt285 on October 25, 2019, 1949 UTC
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I was just reading a posting by RedHat and while looking at the equipment listed I noticed a receiver I didn't recognize. The 'Kenwood KDC-U356' It reminded me how rare it is to hear about shortwave listening in the car. I know obviously the antenna system is below sub par, but it made me curious. Those of you who have owned or own such receivers. What was your experience like over the years? Im guessing that 13,16 and 22 meters were likely the best reception based on the antenna, however im sure with good conditions and large stations that other frequencies could be utilized. Thanks
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It depends a lot on the vehicle and what kind of antenna it has. I've had the Kenwood in both a sedan type car with a rear window antenna, and a full size work van with a 30" whip on the fender. The receiver performance on lower frequencies was noticeably better in the vehicle with the whip. Often times, ignition noise and the like would swamp out reception in the car. Still, I could hear high power broadcasters from Cuba and other national stations in the car. In the van I would often listen to amateur radio operators on 75 meters around 3885 KHz, in AM of course. These would often come in very well depending on where they were located. i even heard a numbers station on it one night. I almost never heard anything above 12-15 MHz surprisingly, outside of WWV/WWVH.
You have to do some digging to see what frequency ranges the receivers support. I settled on the Kenwood mainly for that reason. There was another Pioneer model with shortwave I was looking at, but it was missing most of the frequency ranges I was interested in. Often the only way to tell is to find the manual and look at the specifications.
Skeezix and some others on the board have had in dash receivers over the years too. I wish these receivers had a sync detector, it would make stations much easier to listen to!
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For a few years, 2014(?)-2018, I had put in a new Sony and a new Pioneer in the car (one at a time) with an NMO mount on the trunk with a 39" whip (same length as standard car radio) because the active antenna that came with the car was useless for SW.
Those worked and was decent. Not DX machines, but that's not what they were designed for. Picked up SW BC stations and SW pirates on AM. MW & FM were fine.
The problems were that their controls are infuriatin, as there was no direct frequency entry and limited channels. I could live with limited channels, if there was direct entry. Changing frequencies were pressing & holding a button while it scanned up/down. Not great for large changes and while driving.
Shortwave was divided to the usual bands, but often didn't go quite wide enough. The Pioneer on MW was 530-1650 and on 31m band, the lower edge was 9500, which precluded listening to Voice of Greece on 9420. When they were still on 9935, the receiver did pick them up.
Evening/night listening was usually better as there are more signals and are stronger. Didn't listen to a lot on 19m as few stations and not all that strong these days.
A year ago, got a new vehicle and won't be putting the SW receiver back in.
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Years ago, a SW band was quite common on European car radios. Generally, it was only the 49 m band, often dubbed as the Europa Band in Germany.
I even had one in the 80's, but at that time, the SW was becoming hard to find, with FM band and cassette player within a small case. I even had a cassette recorder inside, but the set was in 3 parts, not easy to install in the dashboard. When it went berserk, I had to change it, but then I could never find a car radio with a SW band.
Later, I looked about that with the help of Internet. The only available models were sold by Abu Dhabi resellers, later again via Israel resellers. Then I discovered a car stereo with SW through a Dutch reseller, Blaupunkt brand. But you could search the official Blaupunkt web sites for days and days without ever finding it. That car stereo receiver had only the 5.8 to 6.3 MHz for the SW, and was aimed mainly to truck drivers (there was a 24V version available). And the price was much more higher than for the SW-less versions.
Nowadays, I know only two ways :
- a used Kenwood RZ-1
- a compact amateur transceiver with general SW receiving.
But there's a desperate task to listen to SW in car : get rid of all the RFI sources in modern cars. Also needing a real antenna, even O.75m whips are no more available, and the worst is in German cars with not even a smallish fin antenna, only an invisible antenna in the windscreen, not even able to receive any AM signal except just a few miles around the TX site.
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I actually mounted a Realistic DX-100 in my Blazer in the 80's. After getting some ignition noise sorted out, I made a loop of wire around the roof rack for an antenna. Worked pretty decent and had the headphone jack wired to the AUX in on my car stereo.
A friend had a Blaupunkt car stereo with an odd head on it shaped like an oversized gearshift on a gooseneck. That thing was wild... got a lot of stations. I don't remember what he had for antenna, but I know he had a 109" whip on that truck.
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I use a Icom R-1500 with the control head mounted on the AC vent, and a 54" whip on a NMO hatchback mount. Beats the heck out of the car radio on MW, but only OK on shortwave, what with all the ignition noise from my car and all the other around me. Better than no SW though.