A big surprise for under $20.00? I'm actually impressed with the Yorek YK-901!

[ThaDood]

Radio Jay Allen comes again with what was a $10.00 impulse buy for him, the new Yorek #YK-901 pocket AM / FM stereo / SW DSP portable. He got his for around $10.00! Mine, was around $22.00 total with with shipping and WV state tax. Now, why did I buy one? For the SW FREQ coverage of 3MHz - 21.850MHz continuous coverage. I want to use it as an on-air monitor tool of 3885kHz AM, 7290kHz AM, 20M AM, 17M AM, and even 15M AM. So, a handy little tool for on-air monitoring myself on Amateur Radio in AM mode. This thing, in size, is about as big as my now de-funked Sony ICF-SW100S clam shell portable. AM MW is about what you would expect, although more sensitive above 1MHz. That 'lil 15" telescopic whip is indeed short for SW, but at sunset here in WV, I was able to RX CHU 3330kHz, HAM's on 3880kHz AM, WWV's 5MHz, WBCQ's 7490kHz, CHU 7850kHz, WBCQ 9330kHz, WWV's 10MHz, and propagation sucked here above that for the time. The big surprise was the FM RX. This portable RX'ed most of the hard-catches for where I live. My DX portables to compare too are a Sangean ATS-803A, Eton E-10, and a C-Crane Radio +. Unreal!!! Just the 15" Yorek's whip, it pulled-in everything that they did. I expected maybe just the local Charleston, WV major stations, but this thing is pulling-in the not too easy to RX translators, Huntington, WV stations, Beckley, WV stations, a couple of KY and OH stations, and even that 104.1FM from Portsmouth, OH, over +80 miles away! WOW!!!!! I did not expect that. The downside??? The two < > button tuning is tedious, at best, with this wide of a FREQ span to tune. Fortunately, if you preset the 32 Memories to like 1MHz each, you can launch-tune from them. But, don't take my word for it, here's Jay's review:   https://radiojayallen.com/a-10-radio-the-yorek-yk-901-amfm-sw-radio/  Hmmmmmmmmmmm... Now, if you are clever enough to built a 'lil BFO for this portable, for SSB and CW RX'ing, then this would be a treat, indeed, for under $20.00! BTW, I was using 1/2-ass charged NiMH  AA batteries. What will it do with fully charged alkalines in it?

[ThaDood]

I've modified a newly bought used, $6.00, Yorek portable with a BNC connector, to shielded RG-174 coax, to chassis GND. And??? 1st, I've tried the Windom Antenna, that I use in amateur radio TX/RX'ing. One leg is 100ft, going over a creek valley, and the other leg is 62ft, along the hillside. The center is fed by a 2kW rated 4:1 Voltage Balun. As expected, IMD and front-end overload throughout the SW bands. The only signals that I've heard fairly clearly were both CHU's, 333okHz and 7850kHz. Everything else was flooded with IMD crap. A little better on the AM BC band, with just some of my Part #15 station, AM610, coming though. FM??? Local stations, and multi-path noise. I then connected the radio to my Diamond Discone D-130J, which I use for 6M FM, 2M, MURS, 222MHz, 440MHz, and various VHF / UHF monitoring. To my surprise, SW was cleaned-up and performed well. Both the 90M and 40M CHU's came through clear. 6070kHz CFRX Toronto was clear, (At 1kW ERP.). Also heard AM HAM's well on 3880kHz. WBCQ 7490kHz and 9330kHz, both came in well. And, heard WWV at 5MHz, but not at 10MHz. Being, it was dusk here, I blame that on piss-poor propagation. I'll try this test again, when propagation above 10MHz is better. FM??? I'd gotten IMD from a couple of the big-guns here, but was able to hear some weaker stations on it. Multipath was also evident, being in this valley. However, this test gave evidence that if I wanted a simple mobile antenna to portable set-up, for super cheap SW in the vehicle, it could happen.  Now, what engine and fuel injector noise will be like is a guess, but will be at least present, as in MW and CB.