Posted: 11/20/2010 1:24:11 AM EDT
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Grundig G5
Added a (not so) longwire antenna. I still get little. What antenna should I build? Why don't these things scan every frequency from the bottom to the top rather than skip a bunch? |
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What band (or frequency) were you trying to listen to? What time of day? And how long a (not so) long wire did you use?
Twenty or thirty feet of wire should make a noticeable difference over a built-in whip antenna for typical shortwave bands. However if band conditions suck, then all bets are off. I have no experience with the G5, but as far as skipping bands of frequencies during scanning, my guess is that their scanning is set up to scan broadcast bands where you are likely to hear signals, as opposed to all frequencies (where you might encounter teletype or fax or SSB or utility transmissions). For a shortwave scanner to stop on a signal, generally the signal needs to have a strong AM carrier. Have you considered trying to find scheduled broadcasts instead of randomly scanning? |
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8 band long wire http://www.hamuniverse.com/shortwaveantenna.html
more info on antennas than you can read in a week http://www.ac6v.com/antprojects.htm#L I built a 3'loop that makes am possible at my location. |
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Post over in the Ham Radio Forum. Those guys are really helpful... -Slice |
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Skipping ranges of Freq's: It is most likely set up to scan only Broadcast rather than including HAM bands which specifically prohibit broadcasting. If you have the manual there may be a way to override that.
Scanning: Most scanners look for noise to stop on (break squelch): noise is everywhere on AM, I don't know how they would be able to build a detection circuit that would recognize speech or music but not the normal white noise (they could do it but it would probably be cost prohibitive). HTH. |