Re: Dorm Interference


"Selwyn-Lloyd McPherson" <sellywelly@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:443c7467$0$4196$c3e8da3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi,

I'm living in a fairly large college dorm and I feel as though, as a
consequence, my Grundig FR-200 is not able to pick up what it
otherwise
might. Considering that around 400-500 college students live here
and
remembering that college student = laptop / desktop + television +
stereos + who knows what else. . . Do you think this would make a
significant difference? Am I living in shortwave hell?

Thanks in advance for your ideas!

Between all that and the cinderblock that you
find in the older dorms you're in a bit of a pickle.
When I used to work in one of the labs in the
basement back in college, I went up to the
second floor, hung a wire out the window,
went down to the basement and brought it
inside and hooked it up to my shortwave so
I could listen while I worked. However, that
being before everyone had a laptop, that might
not help you as much these days. You might
want to look into making a simple magnetic
loop and see if that will do the trick of both
lowering the noise floor and improving your
reception.

RHF ought to be along shortly with some links
on those, but here's one to think about:

http://www.greertech.com/hfloop/mymagloop.html

I can't recall if the FR-200 has an external antenna
hookup, but it probably doesn't. If you need to
connect to your antenna, you can try what's suggested
in Joe Carr's Receiving Antenna Handbook (pg 33):
use a T37 or T50 toroid with the antenna wire
wrapped around it and place the toroid on the
telescoping antenna. You'd use 20 turns of #26
wire for <7 MHz, and 8-10 turns for >7 MHz.

--Mike L.


.

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