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In addition to the loop inside the case with a 3-meter wire at one of the ends that join two telescoping style whips of one meter each short-circuited to take advantage of the entire length. At the other end of the loop, a cable that goes to the ground of the variable capacitor.
I can tune the whole range from 3 to 16 MHz with truly amazing results.
Thanks to you and all the friends of SWLing Post. Regards. 73. Giuseppe Morlè iz0gzw.
This is incredibly clever, Giuseppe! AS I mentioned before, I love how self-contained this makes the entire listening station and I especially love the built-in antenna options! This is truly a shack-in-a-case!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jock Elliott, who shares the following guest post:
There’s a 50-foot antenna in this room. Can you spot it?
Got reception issues? An idea worth considering: the “Horizontal Room Loop.”
by Jock Elliott (KB2GOM)
When my radio room was in the front of the house (on the east side), it was easy to run a feedline to a large RF-hungry SWL dipole with various stubs and feeders.
Now, however, with my “shack” moved to the SW corner of the house, any attempt to mount an outdoor antenna of any significant length raised potential safety issues because of nearby electrical lines.
Monitoring VHF/UHF is no big deal because of high-performance scanner antennas. HF, however, presents challenges.
My main SWL receiver is a Satellit 800, which has the guts of a Drake R8 and also has a large telescoping vertical antenna. It works okay, but I wanted more signal. I had been looking at small loops and got some great recommendations on Radio Reference, but then I had a thought: what if I turned the 8′ x 12′ room into a giant horizontal passive loop?
Here’s a hint.
So I called a ham friend and ran the idea by him. “Sure,” he said, “give it a try.” He gave me 25 feet of 4-conductor phone wire. Before I could use it, I had to strip off the outer insulation so I could get at the four separate insulated wires inside. The better half helped. Once I had the four wires, I connected two of them together and ran the resultant 50-foot strand around the perimeter of the room by taping the wire to the top of window frames and hiding the wire on the top shelves of book cases. As a result, the horizontal room loop is near the ceiling, about 7 feet in the air, and the room itself is on the first floor.
With the loop in place, I hooked the ends to the clip-in terminals on the back of the Satellit 800.
There’s a switch on the back of the 800 that allows me to quickly compare the loop with the radio’s built-in vertical antenna. And . . . it works! It pulls in more signal than the vertical (as measured on the signal strength meter), but I have not noticed a dramatic reduction in noise. On some stations, the horizontal room loop brings the signal up to full scale, and then the sound is very agreeable indeed.
In all, I am pleased with the results.
For anyone who wants squeeze more performance out of their shortwave receiver, I can recommend giving the horizontal room loop a try. It’s not expensive; it’s relatively easy to do (and undo if you don’t like the results), and just might improve your shortwave reception.
If you are not blessed with a bunch of window frames on which you could tape the wire for your room loop, you’ll have to get creative, but with lightweight wire, you don’t need a massive support structure. Tape, map tacks, or even self-adhesive Velcro segments might work for putting your room loop in place.
I don’t claim that this is the “ultimate” SWL DX antenna, but it certainly improved my situation. Perhaps others have suggestions for improving it.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Giuseppe Morlè (IZ0GZW), who shares the following video and notes:
I recently bought a Tecsun S-8800 to be used mainly on shortwave. I carry it in an aluminum case to use it everywhere:
Many thanks for sharing this, Giuseppe! I love the integrated antenna–so clever!
Post readers: Giuseppe has had issues with the S-8800 accidently turning on in the case. Can anyone describe the button combo needed to lock the dial and controls during transport? I checked the manual but have found no reference. Please comment if you can help!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, who has recently been in touch with Anna at Anon-Co and discovered a few Tecsun S-8800 hidden features we haven’t mentioned in the past.
Anna notes:
There are some hidden features for this model that are worth mentioning, and are available on all S-8800 radios, also the pre-2021 ones.
Backlight setting
In power-off mode, press and hold [ 2 ] on the remote until the display shows “ON” or “Off”, this to change the backlight setting to always-on or auto-off. In the auto-off setting the backlight turns on after pressing a button or using a tuning knob, and turns off automatically after a few seconds.
DNR (Dynamic Noise Reduction
In the AM band (LW, MW, SW), first press and hold [ 4 ] on the remote to activate the possibility of this feature. The display will show “ON” or “Off”. Make sure that it is turned on. Subsequently, press and hold [ 6 ] on the remote until the display shows “ON” (DNR activated) or “OFF” (DNR deactivated).
FM De-emphasis Time Constant
While receiving FM broadcasts, long press [ 5 ] on the remote to adjust the de-emphasis setting to 50?s or 75?s.
Adjusting the signal indicator sensitivity:
1. Enter FM, LW, MW or SW band
2. Select a weak station.
3. Press [ 7 ] on the remote for about 0.5 seconds.
4. Rotate the main tuning knob immediately to adjust the bars of the signal indicator.
5. Press any button for confirmation or auto save after 2 seconds.
While making the adjustment in step 4, the value in the top-right corner of the screen changes. The factory default value is supposedly around “6” for FM and SW: 6, and around 16 for MW. The adjustment range is -99 – 99.
Add Seconds to the Clock
With the device turned off, press and hold [ 8 ] on the remote to add seconds to the clock. Press and hold [ 8 ] again to hide the seconds from the clock.
Adjust the FM soft muting threshold
While in FM, press and hold [ 9 ] on the remote for about 2 seconds until the current level (probably around level 5) appears in the main display area. Then adjust it by rotating the tuning knob and then press [ 9 ] again to confirm the setting.
Many thanks to Dan and Anna for sharing these tips!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Nick Boras, who shares the following:
I was motivated by one of Tom Styles videos (hamrad88) about Sync detection to make one of my own. It is no secret that Tecsun offers Sync on several of their radios but only the 660 and 680 really work. My take on Sync is that the results are not consistent even on some of the highest rated Sync radios. While my video is not scientific or nearly complete, I think it gives a good representation of what we can expect from Sync for SWL.
[In addition] today was Radio Day, so I made another video on a very interesting radio:
Thought your readers might be interested.
We are indeed! Thank you for sharing these videos, Nick! That Racal, by the way, is a beautiful beast of a rig!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Adid, who shares two inexpensive mods he made on his XHDATA D-808 shortly after taking delivery of it in 2018. One is simply clear tape over the display to protect it from scratches. The second is applying three tiny drops of glue which create tactile points on the keypad for nighttime operation.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, TomL, who shares the following guest post:
Comb Stereo on Shortwave
by TomL
Comb Stereo is an old technique being implemented over shortwave by the main sound engineer (Daz) at Radio Northern Europe International (RNEI). It ONLY works on Comb Stereo broadcasts which currently are RNEI, This Is A Music Show (WRMI), and one of the KBC broadcasts. It works in real-time or for SDR recorded files, too. It does NOT need a special HD/DAB+ radio.
A number of pluses for Comb Stereo on shortwave compared to digital:
“The bandwidth is the same as mono – So the SNR should be about the same as mono.
Selective fading doesn’t affect the comb bands much, so the balance is largely unaffected by selective fading notches.
The Comb Stereo artifacts are much like typical music effects of echo, chorus, fast reverb or room reflections.”
An enhanced version is broadcast on WRMI for the RNEI time slot on Thursday morning (01:00 UTC) on 5850 kHz. It sounds very good and is not a pseudo-stereo like in my previous article, Music on Shortwave. For one thing, pseudo stereo is not real two-channel encoding and shifts vocals to one side, depending on which channels are chosen for high and low filters, which might get annoying after awhile. What seems amazing to me is that I have been able apply some minor noise reduction in Audacity and the Comb Stereo stays perfectly intact. It also still works after converting the WAV file to MP3 and sounds much like a regular FM broadcast. Furthermore, it does not require a special patented transmitter or receiver chip. It is compatible with regular mono transmitters.
If you want to try it, go to the RNEI web site; download and install the two files listed (VB Audio Cable and CombStereo Pedalboard x64):
It is slightly tricky to setup and use or you will not hear anything (most Windows systems default to 48000 Hz these days). Right-click on the lower-right taskbar Sounds settings. Make sure to setup Properties – Advanced in both the VB-Audio Virtual Cable (Playback and Recording) and your output speakers (Playback) to 24-bit 44100 Hz processing.
Now run the app Pedalboard BAT file which corresponds to the broadcast you recorded (in this example “Start Comb Stereo for WRMI.bat”). Set the Options – Audio Settings:
Since the VB-Audio Virtual Cable takes over your volume output, adjust the volume of your Speakers in Windows’ Sounds – Levels (or you can adjust the volume in the sound player you are using, too):
Play the mono WAV or MP3 file and you should be hearing stereo!
When you are done, close Pedalboard2 and then disable the VB-Audio Virtual Cable for Playback and Recording to get your Sounds back to normal:
I cannot demonstrate what it sounds like unless you have the VB-Audio Virtual Cable and the Comb Stereo app setup and working properly. Here are snippets from recent RNEI broadcasts captured by my noisy porch antenna:
Here are links to the artists’ YouTube videos for comparison:
What is nice is that I can create a space-saving MP3 mono file and this setup will decode the stereo when run from the computer (sounds really nice on a stereo system with a subwoofer). Unlike digital, this analog-friendly stereo seems mostly immune to fading, has a minimum of digital artifacts, and will not go silent and “drop out” like digital does for long, annoying periods of time. It is not perfect stereo but audio players with features like Stereo Widener or Windows Sonic for Headphones can overcome some limitations. Perhaps content providers should consider Comb Stereo for all their shortwave radio shows since it is perfectly compatible with mono AM transmissions!
Enjoying the Music,
TomL
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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Giuseppe Morlè (IZ0GZW), who writes:
