I listen to KUSF at 90.3 on the FM dial. It is a college station from the
University of San Francisco. It has a weak signal. Here is my problem and my
question. I can receive the signal to the station just fine on car radios.
However, I cannot get the signal on portable AM/FM radios. My Sony ICF-SW1
can't pick it up even when I have thirty feet of speaker wire attached to the
antenna. I went to Radio Shack and none of their portable radios could pick up
the signal. Why can cars receive the signal easily and portable can't?

--
Sincerely from,
Jim R Feliciano

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On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 22:14:03 -0500, Jim R Feliciano wrote
(in message ):

I listen to KUSF at 90.3 on the FM dial. It is a college station from the
University of San Francisco. It has a weak signal. Here is my problem and
my
question. I can receive the signal to the station just fine on car radios.
However, I cannot get the signal on portable AM/FM radios. My Sony ICF-SW1
can't pick it up even when I have thirty feet of speaker wire attached to
the
antenna. I went to Radio Shack and none of their portable radios could pick
up
the signal. Why can cars receive the signal easily and portable can't?


One reason: auto radios have to be extremely selective and sensitive because
people want to be able to listen to their auto radios in the middle of
noweher and a weak radio would prejudice the auto owner when it came time for
his/her new car.

Search in Google Groups; this has been discussed quite a bit.




Gray Shockley
-----------------------
DX-392 DX-398
RX-320 DX-399
CCradio w/RS Loop
Torus Tuner (3-13 MHz)
Select-A-Tenna
-----------------------
Vicksburg, MS US

Jim R Feliciano schrieb:

I listen to KUSF at 90.3 on the FM dial. It is a college station from the
University of San Francisco. It has a weak signal. Here is my problem and my
question. I can receive the signal to the station just fine on car radios.
However, I cannot get the signal on portable AM/FM radios. My Sony ICF-SW1
can't pick it up even when I have thirty feet of speaker wire attached to the
antenna. I went to Radio Shack and none of their portable radios could pick up
the signal. Why can cars receive the signal easily and portable can't?

Very simple - actually, literally that, because portables' FM sections
aren't particularly sophisticated these days. 20-30 years ago things
looked different, back then you could actually find very good FM
sections (with multiple cascaded filters and all that) that easily
allowed some FM DX, while today even dedicated FM tuners usually aren't
any real DX machines. Car radios, however, are required to have
excellent FM performance for the reasons stated already.

Stephan
--
HX-inside:
iP133, Mill II 4 MB, 256 MB FPM, 2.5 + 1 (IDE) + 4.5 (SCSI) GB;
WinNT 3.51 / WinNT 4.0 / Win95a / DOS 6.22 + WfW 3.11
Home: http://stephan.win31.de/

Stephan Grossklass ) writes:
Jim R Feliciano schrieb:

I listen to KUSF at 90.3 on the FM dial. It is a college station from the
University of San Francisco. It has a weak signal. Here is my problem and my
question. I can receive the signal to the station just fine on car radios.
However, I cannot get the signal on portable AM/FM radios. My Sony ICF-SW1
can't pick it up even when I have thirty feet of speaker wire attached to the
antenna. I went to Radio Shack and none of their portable radios could pick up
the signal. Why can cars receive the signal easily and portable can't?

Very simple - actually, literally that, because portables' FM sections
aren't particularly sophisticated these days. 20-30 years ago things
looked different, back then you could actually find very good FM
sections (with multiple cascaded filters and all that) that easily
allowed some FM DX, while today even dedicated FM tuners usually aren't
any real DX machines. Car radios, however, are required to have
excellent FM performance for the reasons stated already.

Stephan

I think people sometimes get fooled by the money they spend on
a shortwave radio, which in many cases nowadays does receive the FM
broadcast band. They can be expensive, and provide good performance
on shortwave, so they assume FM reception should be exception too.

But little if none of the same circuitry is used in both bands.
There's a shortwave radio in the little box, and there's an FM
radio in the little box, with a common case and audio amplifier.

Given that, I assume a lot of the FM broadcast sections are very
simple, the sort of thing you'd get in a cheap FM radio. Why spend
money on something that most people don't care about? If it's good
for local reception, then it's fine for virtually everyone.

Michael

Cars are moving and require very wide dynamic range due to the signal
strength's wild variations.

Get a Tivoli at Good Guys and try it out. It has a mofo front-end.
The Sangean 606A also has excellent FM performance.

Also, adding a bunch of wire will just overload the radio. If you
can, put up a proper FM antenna aimed at the station of interest.

On 29 Aug 2003 03:14:03 GMT, (Jim R Feliciano)
wrote:

I listen to KUSF at 90.3 on the FM dial. It is a college station from the
University of San Francisco. It has a weak signal. Here is my problem and my
question. I can receive the signal to the station just fine on car radios.
However, I cannot get the signal on portable AM/FM radios. My Sony ICF-SW1
can't pick it up even when I have thirty feet of speaker wire attached to the
antenna. I went to Radio Shack and none of their portable radios could pick up
the signal. Why can cars receive the signal easily and portable can't?

"Jim R Feliciano" wrote in message
...
I listen to KUSF at 90.3 on the FM dial. It is a college station from the
University of San Francisco. It has a weak signal. Here is my problem
and my
question. I can receive the signal to the station just fine on car
radios.
However, I cannot get the signal on portable AM/FM radios. My Sony
ICF-SW1
can't pick it up even when I have thirty feet of speaker wire attached to
the
antenna. I went to Radio Shack and none of their portable radios could
pick up
the signal. Why can cars receive the signal easily and portable can't?


Find yourself a GE Superadio (preferably the SRII, but even the *gasp* SRIII
is above average.)

Michael Black wrote:

Stephan Grossklass ) writes:
Jim R Feliciano schrieb:

I listen to KUSF at 90.3 on the FM dial. It is a college station from the
University of San Francisco. It has a weak signal. Here is my problem and my
question. I can receive the signal to the station just fine on car radios.
However, I cannot get the signal on portable AM/FM radios. My Sony ICF-SW1
can't pick it up even when I have thirty feet of speaker wire attached to the
antenna. I went to Radio Shack and none of their portable radios could pick up
the signal. Why can cars receive the signal easily and portable can't?

Very simple - actually, literally that, because portables' FM sections
aren't particularly sophisticated these days. 20-30 years ago things
looked different, back then you could actually find very good FM
sections (with multiple cascaded filters and all that) that easily
allowed some FM DX, while today even dedicated FM tuners usually aren't
any real DX machines. Car radios, however, are required to have
excellent FM performance for the reasons stated already.

Stephan

I think people sometimes get fooled by the money they spend on
a shortwave radio, which in many cases nowadays does receive the FM
broadcast band. They can be expensive, and provide good performance
on shortwave, so they assume FM reception should be exception too.

But little if none of the same circuitry is used in both bands.
There's a shortwave radio in the little box, and there's an FM
radio in the little box, with a common case and audio amplifier.

Given that, I assume a lot of the FM broadcast sections are very
simple, the sort of thing you'd get in a cheap FM radio. Why spend
money on something that most people don't care about? If it's good
for local reception, then it's fine for virtually everyone.

Michael


There IS a decent FM radio out there-the Tivoli Audio Model One, with
circuitry designed by the late Henry Kloss. Caveat emptor-apparently the
AM reception is terrible, because all the work went into FM. It costs a
hundred bucks or so and is available at The Good Guys (American
electronics chain store).

JRF, RHF is on the money recommending Sangean's ATS-909 and Grundig 800.
Haven't heard the 800, but do know from hands on that that the 909(Realistic
398) has a killer dx-quality f.m. section! And the RDS display is a nice
adendum. Grundig's Yacht Boy 400 P.E., available from Ratio Shaq, has an f.m.
section similar in performance to Sangean's 909! 73s from KDVS country in Sac
Valley (U.C. Davis' KDVS is also 90.3 Mhz & musically eclectic)!

elg110254 wrote:

JRF, RHF is on the money recommending Sangean's ATS-909 and Grundig 800.
Haven't heard the 800, but do know from hands on that that the 909(Realistic
398) has a killer dx-quality f.m. section! And the RDS display is a nice
adendum. Grundig's Yacht Boy 400 P.E., available from Ratio Shaq, has an f.m.
section similar in performance to Sangean's 909! 73s from KDVS country in Sac
Valley (U.C. Davis' KDVS is also 90.3 Mhz & musically eclectic)!

Hey, you're near me! I'm in Rio Linda. I've had problems recieving KDVS
on an ordinary home stereo when I lived in downtown Sacramento.
Apparently their signal is only meant to cover Davis. KDVS and KUSF are
both training stations for students in the communications and broadcast
journalism programs of their respective universities. Sacramento State
has a student station called The Apex (last time I checked) but
apparently it just covers the campus-must be a Part 15 operation.