Dane Trethowan writes:
> I purchased a Sangean ATS909X "World Band" receiver quite some time ago
> and I'm now only putting the set through its paces.
>
> I could write pages and pages about this unit and I'll do that on my blog
> in the future I'm sure but I do feel that this set deserves praise for
> its SSB reception.
>
> Tuning round the 8-9MHZ frequency range this morning I was able to listen
> to the "Flying Doctors" service, the reception wasn't brilliant but I was
> able to identify the organisation and "Julia Creek", that's a town in
> Central Australia.
>
> Now I've never received this before and - whilst Its obviously possible
> to receive the service as I proved - I always thought you'd need a bigger
> aerial than I was using, I just used the built-in telescopic whip of the
> radio which is around 6 feet long.
A bigger antenna would bring in more signals, but sometimes, you
run up against the issue of front-end overload where the
receiver is overwhelmed by the level of the signals that the
outdoor antenna brings in and any active stages in the front end
begin to act like mixers which is not what they are supposed to
do.
> Perhaps what makes things different these days is the absence of a lot of
> traffic from the SW bands.
>
> For those interested in this radio I recommend it as it is one of the few
> these days to offer both dual conversion circuitry and a variable RF-gain
> control across all frequencies from 100-29999KHZ.
That's very good. You should hear the ten-meter amateur
band and probably a lot of illegal CB pirates from North
America. The only thing I can say about CB pirates is that
they are not on the amateur bands. They know better or at least
most of them aren't that stupid.
> The set also comes equipped with a very nice "DSP" which brings the radio
> alive! when listening to medium-wave broadcasts where a strong signal is
> next to a waker one, the DSP allows the weaker signal to be heard
> intelligibly.
With the increasing Solar activity, the Sun is making
the frequencies between 20 and 30 MHZ come to life again after
several years of nothing but cosmic hiss and static so you
should enjoy a lot of good listening.
You mentioned the Flying Doctor Service. I read about
that some when I was in college as it was the platform that
supported the School of the Air for kids who lived in the
Outback. This was in the late seventies when I was studying
about this topic so I think it was still in operation then. I
think the School of the Air now uses satellite terminals which
gives them a much better level of service than the short wave
radios did, but what the Royal Flying Doctor Service did back
then was pure genius.
Martin
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