Category Archives: Shortwave Radio

A happy accident, and some experiments

By Jock Elliott, KB2GOM

When you live in an antenna-challenged situation as I do (stringing long wire antennas outside is problematic for me), the result is a never-ending search for an improved signal.

Toward that end, I’ve experimented with a horizontal room loop, an indoor end-fed, and a short dipole.

Along the way, I decided to test the MFJ 1020C active antenna/preselector, and I liked it pretty well. My conclusion was: Bearing in mind that it won’t improve every signal you want to hear, if you live in an antenna-challenged situation, the MFJ 1020C – particularly if you can get 20-50 feet of wire outdoors or run around the perimeter of a room – may be just what the doctor ordered.

After my test of the 1020C, I had an online conversation with Andrew (grayhat), and he suggested that I might want to have a look at the MFJ 956 passive selector. Its major claim to fame is: “Boost your favorite stations while rejecting images, intermod, and phantom signals! The MFJ-956 Pre-Selector/Antenna Tuner greatly improves reception from .15 to 30 MHz — especially below 2MHz. It has tuner bypass/ground receiver positions. The MFJ-956 measures a compact 2 x 3 x 4 inches.”

MFJ was kind enough to send a 956 to me, and while I did not test it below 2 MHz, I found that it proved very helpful in tuning in the BBC mid-winter broadcast to Antarctica. I started out with the MFJ 1020C. Lots of noise and fades. Reception was somewhat better using the 1020C (compared to bypass), but then I switched to MFJ 956. I found I could copy better with the 956, even though it provides no amplification. Tuning slightly off-peak offered the best copy, better than bypass. I was listening in USB. In all, it is a useful piece of gear.

While poking around the MFJ website I discovered the MFJ 1046 Receiver Preselector, 1.6-33 MHz. Among other claims, MFJ has this to say about the 1046: “MFJs new Passive Preselector has extremely high dynamic range! It improves the performance of nearly any HF or shortwave receiver/transceiver. It vastly improves the most expensive receivers. Especially helpful to those with broadband front-ends that are prone to overload.”

Sounds promising, I thought, so I emailed Thomas, SWLing’s Maximum Leader, to see if maybe MFJ would like me to have a look at one.

A happy accident

A few days later, package arrived.

I was unpacking it when the Brain Dudes interrupted.

Brain Dudes: Hey!!

Me: What?!!

Brain Dudes: That thing look a little weird to you?

Me: Whaddya mean?

Brain Dudes: Look at the front . . . what do you see?

Me: Well, on left, a knob labeled GAIN; next to that, and ON/OFF button; moving to the right, a BAND selector switch, and finally a TUNE knob.

Brain Dudes: And what is the MFJ 1046 supposed to have?

Me: A big tuning knob, an ON/OFF switch, and a BAND selector switch . . . maybe this is an improved model . . .

Brain Dudes: How ‘bout you look on the back panel . . . what do you see?

Me: The usual connections for antenna and receiver . . . and a plug-in socket for an external power supply.

Brain Dudes: Is a passive preselector supposed to have a power socket?

Me: No . . .

Brain Dudes: OK, final clue, Sherlock: suppose you read the label on the front panel.

Me: MFJ 1045C. Holy smokes! They sent me the wrong unit!

(I hear the Brain Dude yelling at someone in the background: “Finally, the light comes on! I told you switching to decaf was a bad idea!)

Brain dudes: So they sent you the wrong unit; suppose you test it anyway since it’s here.

So I did. And it turns out that MFJ sending the 1045C instead of the 1046 was a happy accident because the 1045C, which is an active preselector, delivers excellent performance across the board.

This is what MFJ says about the 1045C: “Lets you copy weak signals. Rejects out-of-band signals, images. 1.8 to 54 MHz. Up to 20 dB gain. Gain control. Dual gate MOSFET, bipolar transistors for low noise, high gain. Connect 2 antennas, 2 receivers. Coax and phone jacks. 9-18 VDC or MFJ-1312D.”

Once the antenna, receiver, and power supply are connected (I used the power supply that MFJ sent me with the 1020C), I operate the 1045C in much the same way as the 1020C:

With the unit in BYPASS mode (the ON/OFF button out), tune the receiver to the frequency you want to hear.
Set the GAIN knob to around 3 or 4.
Set the BAND knob to the band with the MHz that you are tuned to.
Press the ON/OFF/BYPASS button in. This turns on the active preselector and amplification circuits and a red light comes on to let you know the unit is activated.
Slowly turn the TUNE knob back & forth. At some point in its tuning range, you will hear the signal and/or noise peak.
Finally, adjust the GAIN knob for maximum intelligibility of the signal. Sometimes tuning slightly to the side of the peak works best.

I tested the MFJ 1045C with my end-fed indoor antenna (see link above) and with the short dipole (also, see link above). I also did head-to-head comparisons with the MFJ 1020C and those two antennas.

The results

Here’s what I found:

The indoor end-fed antenna (which is 45 long) out-performs the short dipole (which is 6 feet total length) in all cases. That’s no surprise, but bear in mind that not everyone has a situation in which they can deploy the longer antenna. The 6-foot dipole definitely out-performs the whip antenna on my Satellit 800.
The 1045C has a broader range of amplification than the 1020C. It appears to reject adjacent channel interference as well or better than the 1020C, and, to my ear, the 1045C has a lower noise floor. If you turn the GAIN knob fully to the left, it gets to a position where it appears to actually attenuate the signal. And I never found a situation in which, if properly tuned, the signal delivered by the 1045C was at least equal to the bypass signal, and many times it was significantly better. In short, in the HF range the 1045C appears do to everything that the 1020C does (with the exception of the 1020C’s screw-in whip antenna) and do it better.
When using the 1045C with a portable (my Tecsun 880), I found that I could hear the noise peaks better than with the 1020C, which is a great help in tuning for best performance.

So why would you chose the 1020C or the 956 over the 1045C? Short answer: if you are a MW or LW enthusiast. According to MFJ, the 1045C covers 1.8 to 54 MHz; the 1020C covers .3 to 40 MHz, and the 956 covers 150 kHz to 35 MHz.

However, if you are an HF weenie like I am who enjoys teasing out faint signals, and particularly if you are faced with a sub-optimal antenna situation, the MFJ 1045C, in my opinion, is definitely worth a try.

Click here to check out the MFJ-1045C.

Shameless plug: check out the SWLing Post Message Board there are often interesting discussions going on there.

Can the Eton Elite Satellit meet 2022 expectations?

39 Replies

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, for the following guest commentary:

The Elite Satellit: Can Eton Deliver to Radio Users Who Expect Higher QC and Feature Standards?

by Dan Robinson

It’s been many years since the original E1 took the hobby world by storm. Everyone remembers the issues that plagued the E1, from the rubber coating that degraded over time, to display and encoder issues, and the calibration issues that frustrate some users.

In anticipation of the arrival of the Elite Satellit, I got both of my E1s out of storage — one in the 9xxx serial number range required a de-gooing session, accomplished quite well using Max Pro cleaner and 70% alcohol. It was interesting note, during that process, that the XM module on one side of the radio was more sensitive to color loss than other parts of the cabinet, reducing to an almost silver color when all was finished.

Original Eton E1 XM

Using the original E1s provided a reminder of how good these receivers were and still are, if you have managed to avoid display and encoder issues. The combination of PBT, triple selectivity and highly-effective SYNC was a blockbuster combination. The radio failed only in the area of quality control.

As Universal Radio and other distributors prepare to send out the first tranche of receivers, some thoughts are in order. The first is that one hopes Eton has lessons from the first go around regarding Quality Control. I have a sinking feeling about this based on my experiences in recent years reviewing receivers by Tecsun.

Eton needs to know that those who will buy the Elite Satellit, and that includes old-timers like myself but newcomers to the hobby, now have much higher standards specifically because of the features we have seen Tecsun and some other manufacturers put in portables.

Primarily, the presence of a recalibration capability really poses a challenge where the Elite Satellit is concerned. Discerning buyers no longer have to put up with a radio that has calibration and/or stability problems. This is why I am curious as to whether Eton included an adjustment function through software or an adjustment hole as with the original E1. So far, there has been no confirmation on this question from Eton or anyone else.

Original Eton E1 XM

With an older E1, tweaking of the master oscillator was possible through the small adjustment hold in the rear of the radio cabinet. This was tricky since in many units the hole was inconveniently located directly under one of the plastic ribs on the back.

I solved this problem by gently cutting a small section of one rib with a Dremel or similar tool, providing easier access. Still, adjustment has to be done carefully due to the sensitivity of the pot, and preferably with a non-metallic jewelers flat head screw driver. Even then, movements of the radio would often throw the radio back off.

But again, E1 users were spoiled by the recalibration capability which Tecsun included on receivers from the PL-880 to the 990x and 501s and even the PL-368, all of which provide a software method of zeroing frequency in SSB. Even Malahit SDRs have a fine adjustment setting in software.

If Eton has not taken this into account, and has not made any recalibration possible, I fear that it may face a good number of buyers who will simply return radios that suffer from significant frequency error. In short, a “good enough for government” approach by Eton when it comes to calibration QC is simply not going to be sufficient because for years now, Tecsun has been setting a higher standard.

Physical cosmetic issues too will also be an important indicator as to Eton’s attention to QC. If Eton learned its lesson from the rubberized cabinet fiasco, this should not be a major problem. But I would urge owners of the new Elite Satellit to examine your radio for QC issues, like LCD pixel problems, wobbly knobs and loose encoders, and issues with the telescopic antenna.

All of this becomes even more important because Eton is charging so much for this radio. Even taking inflation into account since the original E1 appeared, $599 for a radio that adds only HD and AIR band as features, but which still might suffer from QC problems is extremely high and I fear Eton may end up with numerous returns if the Elite Satellit fails in any key areas.

So, the clock ticks down to the moment when many of us will receive that box containing the Eton Elite Satellit. The question is will what is inside be able to meet the higher standards we have come to expect from a multi-band portable?

Radio Waves: New Yaesu FT-710 AESS, Ukraine’s Army FM, Foil 28 MHz antenna, and ATS-25 4.1 Firmware Review,

Radio Waves: Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!

Many thanks to Eric Jon Magnuson for summarizing these news items for Radio Waves!

Yaesu Introduces the FT-710 AESS 100 SDR Transceiver (QRPer.com)

Yaesu is introducing a new 100 watt SDR transceiver to their product line: the Yaesu FT-170.

The Yaesu FT-710 will cover 160-6 meters with 100 watts output. There are two other Japanese market versions: the FT-710M and FT-710S which are 50 and 10 watt respectively.

This general coverage rig will feature “AESS”–Yaesu’s ‘Acoustic Enhanced Speaker System’ which “creates the high-fidelity audio output.” Yaesu notes that the FT-710 utilizes, “the advanced digital RF technology introduced in the FTDX101 and FTDX10 series.”

Click here to check out the published features and specifications of the new FT-710.

Ukraine’s ‘Army FM’ Radio Adapts To Full-Scale War (CoffeeOrDie)

KYIV, Ukraine — During the early morning hours of Feb. 24, as Russian missiles struck targets across Ukraine in the opening hours of the full-scale war, the Ukrainian military’s Army FM radio station went underground.

The team of seven army officers and about 10 civilian personnel abandoned their studio on the top floor of a downtown Kyiv building and relocated into a nearby basement. Inside the dank and dark underground space, they connected a mixing board and a couple of laptops to a mobile radio system, which the station’s reporters had previously used to report from the Donbas trenches.

“I just grabbed my Kalashnikov and went to work,” said Oleksandr Yurchenko, 32, a Ukrainian army second lieutenant assigned to Army FM.

While a Russian invasion force advanced to the outskirts of Kyiv in the war’s perilous first few days, the Army FM team stayed at their posts and worked in six-hour shifts to keep their programs running 24/7. They constructed makeshift beds from shipping pallets and stocked the basement studio with food and water. Body armor vests and Kalashnikovs occupied all available shelves and empty corners.

From this jury-rigged basement studio, Army FM continued to transmit information and entertainment programs to listeners across Ukraine — including into territories Russian forces invaded and occupied. [Continue reading…]

Hackaday: Homemade 28 MHz antenna made from foil (Hackaday via the Southgate ARC)

On Hackaday Chris Lott WD4OLP writes about DL1DN’s aluminum foil 20cm antenna for 28 MHz (10m) operation

David DL1DN, is an Amateur Radio enthusiast with a penchant for low-power (QRP) portable operations. Recently he was out and about, and found that 10 m propagation was wide open. Not discouraged by having forgotten his antenna, he kludges up a makeshift one using a 20 cm length of aluminum foil.

Read the Hackaday story and watch the video at
https://hackaday.com/2022/07/02/aluminum-foil-20-cm-antenna-for-10-m-operation/

Dave reviews the ATS-25 with Binns 4.1 firmware

Dave Zantow writes:

ATS-25 with Binns 4.1 firmware Review Now Posted. […] There were 7 different versions in the beta stage. New audio file added as well (Sync when it does not work so well, which is NOT all the time). Might be one more update before release (not sure right now).

Click here to check it out.

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BBC Radio 4: “Scotland’s Lord Haw Haw”

Scotland’s Lord Haw Haw

Radio played a key role in the propaganda campaigns of Nazi Germany. The most notorious personality in this radio war was William Joyce, or ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ – who came to be known as the English voice of Nazi Germany. But he wasn’t alone in this effort.

Professor Jo Fox of Durham University discovers the lost transcripts of Radio Caledonia, a ‘secret station’ designed to disseminate defeatist propaganda to the people of Scotland and sow seeds of dissent among its listeners. Set up by the German Propaganda Ministry in 1940, the presenter was Scottish national Donald Grant.

Jo Fox examines the Nazis’ attempts to appeal to Scottish nationalist feeling through these broadcasts and asks why, unlike Joyce, Donald Grant was spared execution.

Producer: Sarah Shebbeare.

Click here to listen on BBC Sounds.

Eton Elite Satellit Pricing and Context

33 Replies

As the Eton Elite Satellit comes closer to fruition, I’ve gotten a lot of questions and comments from readers about the price retailers are publishing. Here they are so far (all in USD):

Even the lowest price ($599.99 via Universal) is no trivial amount for most of us.

That said, the pricing doesn’t surprise me.

Back in 2005 when this radio’s predecessor, the Eton E1/XM, finally hit the market, it was sold for $499.95. Here’s a screenshot from Universal’s site in 2005 courtesy of the Wayback Machine:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statists, $499.95 in June 2005 has the same buying power as $751.33 in May 2022. If we add to that the recent elevated prices for many radio/electronic goods due to increased component cost and availability of chips, frankly I’m a little surprised Eton’s even able to release a new product this of all years. These aren’t easy days for electronics manufacturers. Then again, Eton has been producing radios for decades and obviously knows the manufacturing landscape quite well.

When I first learned about the new Elite Satellit, you could have painted me seven shades of surprised. With the advent of inexpensive high-performance SDRs, affordable DSP portables, and knowing full well the shortwave portable radio market is on the decline (in terms of customer numbers), I would have never guessed a new enthusiast-grade portable would be introduced.

My hope is that the Elite Satellit will deliver the performance we all want. I firmly believe that high-performance, quality gear enriches the hobby as a whole.

In terms of Elite Satellit specs and features, there’s a lot of confusion out there right now [great article, Guy!], but I’m sure this will be cleared up in coming weeks.

Many have also commented about Universal Radio especially since they officially closed their brick and mortar store near Columbus, Ohio in November 2020. Fred Osterman mentioned to customers at the time that Universal would still be selling books, parts, and some accessories online, but they would no longer carry inventory like ham radio transceivers.

Universal will be an authorized distributor of the Eton Satellit Elite and I wouldn’t hesitate purchasing from them. I suspect Fred and Barbara made an exception for Eton because they’ve been such a long-term distributor (dating back to the 1980s). I also think Universal will continue being a limited online retailer at least into 2023 or even beyond. Eton will fully back a warranty from products purchased at Universal regardless.

The solution for apartment/condo dwellers, perhaps?

30 Replies

By Jock Elliott, KB2GOM

It was research on preselectors that led me to this: Improving HF Reception – The RadioReference Wiki

In that section of the RadioReference Wiki, written by Mike, KA3JJZ, I found the following:

Another way an active preselector could be used is to use it to load a very short dipole – say not more than 1 meter (roughly 3 foot) for each leg. A number of years ago, a company called Datong marketed such an antenna (with a preamp right at the antenna feedpoint) that was popular in Europe and to some lesser extent in the Americas because it’s easy to hide the antenna.

In the magic of my mind, I could picture using the short dipole strung across two windows — or a large window — in an apartment or condo (or anyplace with antenna restrictions) and connected to an MFJ 1020C. I had not yet done the experiment, but I had tested the 1020C and found it to be a worthy piece of gear. So I thought the short dipole/1020C experiment might be worth a shot.

The heart of the short dipole, the LDG 9:1 unun.

So I cut two yard-long lengths of wire and attached them to a 9:1 unun. I created loops at the outer end of each leg of the dipole and hung the whole assembly from a curtain rod covering two windows. A coax links the short dipole to the MFJ 1020C, and a jumper connects the output of the 1020C to my Satellit 800 receiver.

The completed dipole. Not fancy, but it works.

Bottom line: it works. The vast majority of the time, even when the 1020C preselector is in bypass mode, the short horizontal dipole/1020C combo delivers a better signal-to-noise than the Satellit’s vertical telescopic antenna. (In rare cases, they are equal.) And when the preselector amplification circuits are activated and properly tuned, the signal is usually improved, often significantly. The Big Trick is to use the preselector to peak the noise at the frequency you want to hears and then tune slightly to the side of best listening.

Obviously that would be cumbersome for band-scanning, but you could band-scan in bypass mode and then tweak the “hits” with the amplification circuitry. In all, if you are living in an antenna-challenged situation, the short dipole/1020C combo just might make your shortwave listening better.

Final thought: Mike, who wrote the section of Radio Reference wiki that inspired this experiment, said:

You do have to watch your gain otherwise you will get a lot more noise than signal. I did my experiment using an old Palomar preselector. You can also try using a YouLoop as the antenna – it should, in theory, work even better than just a simple whip.

One thing that you could mention in your article is that there is an advantage to having a small dipole like that as the receiving element. Not only is it fairly easy to hide, it can be moved around to find a somewhat quieter location. However the coax should be kept as short as you can, otherwise there is a chance that common mode noise would become an issue – particularly if it runs near computers or other RFI sources

Remember that even a 1 or 2 S unit improvement might make the difference between hearing a signal and not hearing it at all. All we are doing here is trying to improve the signal/noise ratio coming into the unit. That little vertical whip on the 1020c is not likely to be the best choice, and that’s what I am trying to improve upon.

– Mike KA3JJZ

Thanks, Mike!

Adi spots an Eddystone among other radios in the Netflix series Spycraft

1 Reply

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Adi, who writes:

Hi Thomas,

I just finished watching “Spycraft” on Netfilx. It’s 8X30min parts documentary.

The last part is “Recruiting the best spy“.

I first spotted this lovely 880 Eddystone receiver but coming into the ~20 min was the story of the ICF-2010 and how an American spy for Cuba used it to receive the “numbered” code massages.

Later on there is nice illustration how the code was used.