HFU HF Underground
Technical Topics => Equipment => Topic started by: Elf36 on May 08, 2022, 1624 UTC
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I was reading a story yesterday about a shortwave listener who rented a car outside of the US and noticed that the car stereo in the rental had shortwave as well as AM/FM , The radio was a Sony CDX-G1200U. What I'm trying to figure out is, do all Sony CDX-G1200U receive on shortwave, or is it just available in other countries outside of the US?
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I don't remember what year it was, but 'Passport To World Band Radio' covered this very subject, when they reviewed the The Becker Mexico car stereo, with SW bands on it. As it was back then, still seems true today, that since shortwave listening is a hobby in North America, and not seen as a necessity, they are just not offered over here. So, interested enthusiasts have to order from overseas and pay stupid money to do it. Me??? I'd love to have MW - HF available on the road, and not have to rig-up a portable, or HF rig, to do it. It's mainly about supply and demand. And, I also suspect, with today's wacky political climate, it may also be a way to keep the public from hearing alternative news sources from around the world that across radio unfiltered and uncensored. Just my $0.02 there.
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I'll let you know what I find out. I know it would only be good for the large high-powered broadcasts. Thinking of Passport to World Band Radio always makes me nostalgic. I loved all of the info they had and the books were just beautiful and of such high quality.
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Various manufacturers have included shortwave in their aftermarket radios over the years. As the years go by there are fewer and fewer. About 10 years ago, there was a guy in Israel selling them on ebay, new in the box. You have to be careful, as often the receive frequency ranges are limited, and often only sold for overseas markets like the south pacific and the middle east. Sometimes you're also stuck with 9 KHz steps on MW, or odd FM frequency ranges.
(https://i.imgur.com/64lIOAu.jpg)
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Yes. I absolutely remember someone in Israel selling some several years ago on Ebay. This pops into my head every 3/4 years when I see something that reminds me about car receivers with shortwave.
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There have also been transvertors for SWL with existing car stereos. The MFJ-306 comes to mind, but AFAIK, it was not a great performer.
I suspect you would fair (much) better with an affordable mobile HF transceiver, then simply pipe the audio to your existing stereo headunit if desired. Like the Xiegu G1M, which is a small quad-band HF transceiver with general converge receive. Even cheaper are the various uSDR models floating about eBay and similar, though those knockoffs could be a huge YMMV.
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You will have tough time to find the specifications on Internet. The car radios have many versions under the same name for different markets. The big corporations won't let you find easily the specifications for the other markets (be prepared to use a good VPN to pretend you are in the Middle-East or Central Africa, or any remote part of the world).
Or you'll find many product descriptions for 'radios' without anything about the bands. Sometimes, a small 'rds' logo is the only clue that the car stereo has an FM band.
After looking for car radios with SW bands, I came to the conclusion that the better way is to look for compact ham transceivers with general SW receiving coverage, those from Yaesu for example. But the antenna plugs are not those of the car stereos. Anyway, the car antennas are no longer good for SW.
Worse, the car electronics are now nests of RFI, even when the engine is stopped (try with a small portable RX with its own batteries, expect more problems for any tentative to use the car electric supply).
And I expect even more issues with the new cars high power batteries and electric motors.
I wonder how can Yaesu and alike sell any portable radio with SW for use in a car !
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Ray is right - probably only Asian areas can be interested in such car receivers.
I only remember the expedition to Belarus and Lithuania, when the Warsaw Pact troops entered Czechoslovakia.
Thanks to Radio Free Europe broadcasts on HF I knew what was going on!
Now any day will come my mini radio receiver HRD-747 with which you can travel around the world.
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I can remember as a kid in the late 70's early 80's lusting after the Blaupunkt Berlin. That's the one with the tuner on a stalk/flexible arm. It came in some German high end cars like Porsche 911, etc. It had SW and LW. I tried to convince my parents at the time we needed one for the car but they didn't buy my reasoning.