wrote:
On Wednesday, April 18, 2001 at 2:10:58 PM UTC-4, Phil Langerholic wrote:
I just moved out to York, PA from the Pittsburgh, PA area and I would
like to listen to KDKA AM 1020 during the day. I am not having any
luck receiving KDKA with my GE Super Radio III or DX-398 with a MW
TORUS-TUNER LOOP ANTENNA from Edek Electronics in MD that I picked up
at a local hamfest. York is about 220 miles east of the KDKA antenna
so I know I am pushing the ground wave limits.

I have seen some post in the NG raving about an old Panasonic RF-2200
radio calling it one of the best MW radios ever made. I have lurked
on the swap newsgroup for some time and have not seen anyone selling
that radio. I have looked on ebay, but I don't think a 25 year old
radio should sell for $150.00 to $250.00. Is this radio really that
good? For that money I could buy a new CC Radio or a Sony 7600G which
I would expect both to perform better than a 25 year old analog
receiver Would the RF-2200 perform better than the GE SRIII or DX-398
I currently have? Would I see better results with the RF-2200
compared to the CC Radio or Sony 7600G?

Phil Langerholic

Would an external RF amplifier low noise type help?

Not a bad idea.

Some thoughts:

o Line of site is out. Dist to horizon for tower ht h earth radius R
is sqrt((R+h)^2-R^2) or sqrt( 2 R h + h^2 ), effectively sqrt( 2 R h ).
For units of miles sqrt(2 R) is approx 90 and sqrt(2 R h) is the same.
So for two towers a mile high, each is 90 mi from horizon for a
total of 180 mi. For ht of 0.1 mi (528') each, get 180 * .316 or
about 57 mi total.

o A loop, maybe tuned for that frequency and raised very high might
be an improvement

o If you have sources of interference nearby, you could try nulling
them out with a notch filter.

o You could try a search for "web sdr pa". One match is
http://k3fef.com:8901/ in Milford, PA. From there if I select
AM and "All bands" I can find the label KDKA 1020 and select that
frequency. Then I choose "One band" and zoom in.

Seems to be an extremely weak signal but no sound available on this
laptop at the moment [the text for the KDKA label has "[Night]"
appended to it so they aren't expecting daytime reception].

Also look for WebSDR's in neighboring states (Ohio, Kentucky, WV?).

I wrote:

Some thoughts:

o Line of site is out. Dist to horizon for tower ht h earth radius R
is sqrt((R+h)^2-R^2) or sqrt( 2 R h + h^2 ), effectively sqrt( 2 R h ).
For units of miles sqrt(2 R) is approx 90 and sqrt(2 R h) is the same.

Insert at end of sentence: "for h=1" ^^^^^

So for two towers a mile high, each is 90 mi from horizon for a
total of 180 mi. For ht of 0.1 mi (528') each, get 180 * .316 or
about 57 mi total.