WA Radio Scanner Users' Group

Hi all,

I ordered one of these: http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll ... 0827862554 and it arrived yesterday.
I thought it would be chinese garbage, but it actually has a very good build quality and the manual is in perfect english.

I didn't have much time to play around last night, but I managed to listen to Voice of Indonesia, albeit extremely low signal and could barely make out what they were saying.

It came with a long piece of wire (probably about 10m?). I live in an apartment on the top story (3 stories high) and I simply threw this long wire off the edge of my balcony.

The normal method of using a shortwave antenna would be to run it horizontally... does anyone know if I can expect much luck running it vertically? Does it make a huge difference?

The other bummer is that I live about 250m from a train line, so there's lots of electricity lines around which will give me a bit of interference. I'm just curious really as to what others think about my setup, and if I'm likely to have any sort of luck DXing international stations, or am I dreaming and wasting my time?

Going to have another play tonight.

Thanks!

Bonez wrote:It came with a long piece of wire (probably about 10m?). I live in an apartment on the top story (3 stories high) and I simply threw this long wire off the edge of my balcony.

The normal method of using a shortwave antenna would be to run it horizontally... does anyone know if I can expect much luck running it vertically? Does it make a huge difference?

The polarisation probably doesn't matter much at SW frequencies, however running the wire down or along the building may cause unpredictable results due to metal in the structure (girders etc) Horizontal away from the building would be better for that reason, but would obviously be harder. Sounds like a job for a squid pole!

Yes the DE1103 is a better than expected radio. Plus it has a BFO so can listen to SSB on it. I have only ever used the internal whip. I have had mine for probably nearly 2 years and paid twice what that listing you showed was. Even then I thought it was a bargain. Even more so now.

Thanks for the info guys, will look into a squid pole or possibly a magnetic loop antenna.

So far the only things I have been able to hear tonight is

Radio Australia 3/3
BBC World 4/4
Some Chinese station 6/9

I'd really like to be able to receive Voice of Indonesia on 9525. It was faint last night, so far tonight no luck.

I live in Subi and lots of power lines. I think there's probably a fair bit of interference. Would be great to go out into some bushland or a park somewhere and string up a piece of wire.

Can anyone tell me the most commonly used amateur HF freqs in and around Perth? I could look at the bandplan of course, but I don't know where people tend to hang out around here. I'm an amateur myself but never really got into HF that much...

Cheers

edit: Hey Blinky, did yours come with that 10m piece of black wire? You said you've only ever used the telescopic, but just wondering if you got the ext antenna too. I think it's really crap. Maybe a thicker piece of wire would be better. It's thinner than a single strand headphone cable... about half the thickness of iPhone/iPod headphones

Bonez wrote: edit: Hey Blinky, did yours come with that 10m piece of black wire? You said you've only ever used the telescopic, but just wondering if you got the ext antenna too. I think it's really crap. Maybe a thicker piece of wire would be better. It's thinner than a single strand headphone cable... about half the thickness of iPhone/iPod headphones

Hi Bonez, I think it did. Like you I thought it was next to useless so I don't know what happened to it,probably thrown away.

As for frequencies, listen to 80m at night or 40m late afternoon. They would be the most consistant. 7.058MHz most days at 4pm you will hear a group sending SSTV pictures and then chatting assuming solar activity has not upset things. 7.093 is a popular frequency as well.

Joe Carr's Receiving Antenna Handbook
By Joseph Carr
http://www.dxing.com/tnotes.htm
is an excellent book for SW listening and DXing
and has plenty of ideas for people in tricky situations like high rise apartments
and on the page linked to are some pdfs to download


cheers

I bought this unit as well (Degen DE1103), and think it's a great little unit. Only had it a few weeks, so haven't really picked up a lot.
Looking at the best way of using the 10m wire antenna in a 1st floor apartment?

numloxx wrote:I bought this unit as well (Degen DE1103), and think it's a great little unit. Only had it a few weeks, so haven't really picked up a lot.
Looking at the best way of using the 10m wire antenna in a 1st floor apartment?

There's this http://www.mfjenterprises.com/Product.p ... d=MFJ-1622 which will give you 40m to 2m if you can find somewhere to mount it.

Also enter "stealth hf antenna" and "apartment hf antenna" into your favourite internet search.

There was the Miracle Whip antenna but not sure if you can get them any more. The bookmark I have for them comes up as "Suspended account" That antenna mounts directly onto the back of the radio and has manual matching. If you are handy with electronics you can make a clone of the Miracle Whip http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/m1ios/html/wonder%20whip.htm

Either way, it won't be quite the same as a full-size antenna hanging out in free space.

Thanks, I'll look into it

A video I made demonstrating the interference caused by one of those Power Ethernet network adapters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEBG75Q_St8

numloxx wrote:I bought this unit as well (Degen DE1103), and think it's a great little unit. Only had it a few weeks, so haven't really picked up a lot.
Looking at the best way of using the 10m wire antenna in a 1st floor apartment?

Wow, that is a huge bang for your buck radio ... I sold my Sangean ATS-909 and I want to buy something else ... anything with SSB so I can also listen to the amateur HF band ... I was thinking to get the ICOM IC-R20 ... but after looking at their price ... Too Expensive ... but other wise it will the the ultimate portable radio ... you can virtually listen to anything and record them too ...

But it's only got a 3.5mm antenna jack, not a BNC or other, so adding a decent antenna to it will be an issue.