Spare Me the Viagra Jokes--Who's Got the Biggest Ferrite Antenna in Town?

Hailing from Australia, Dylan tells us what radios boast the biggest AM ferrite antennas:

A lot of the 60s English radios were AM (and LW) only, and had 9 inch or bigger ferrite rods.  The Murphy I mentioned [in an earlier email to me] is like that.  The Hacker I have has a ferrite rod that’s about 11 or 12 inches long– part of the reason why they’re so good on AM.  Another is that a lot of ex-military people were involved post WWII in the radio manufacturing companies (and they had lots of experience in radio and radar).

Dylan has given us some radios (he also said look for Salut and Hacker) that may be part of the Radiophile's Holy Grail. 

Comments

[Ed]

Nothing beats a 60-FOOT long wire outdoor antenna for AM. Beat that.

[Jeffrey McMahon]

My neighbors will love that eyesore but who cares when you've got AM that sounds like digital stereo?

[Mike W]

I had a longwire years ago and used it with a Lowe HF-150, a Grundig Satellit 700, and a couple of other radios.

At first it seemed to introduce as much noise as signal, but then I tried an RF Systems MLB (magnetic longwire balun) with a 50 Ohm coax lead-in. It solved the noise problem almost completely and left most of the signal. Non-directional, but overall the best antenna I ever had for SW/MW.

The best antenna I ever used for MW per se was a Kiwa MW Loop, but it require such constant tweaking that I threw it back into the eBay pool where it came from.

[db]

Further to the whole ferrite antenna thing, there seems to be a lot of variation with the makes and models of 60s and 70s English radios - the Hacker I have has a great big ferrite rod running the length of the case (unlike the Hunter in the pic for the above post) but there are quite a few good websites with information (and with internal photos). As far as a great sounding smaller radio, the Murphy B818, sounds very good, and has a ferrite thats only slightly smaller, and has good reception. A lot of these radios were designed to be mounted in a cradle under the dashboard, in cars, and have sockets for car antenna. Hooking a car radio antenna to the Murphy I have improves the reception markedly.

Which brings me to another point - older (60s and 70s) car radios. A lot of them had accessory cradles, that the radio could be easily removed from, so the radio doubled as a portable and a car radio. I have come across a few (sharp and sanyo brands for example) that are very good AM/MW performers.

[db]

http://www.g1jbg.co.uk/dom13.htm

[db]

regarding the longwire another thing to experiment with is sort of making it into a beverage antenna (google on that term, put a 440ohm non metalic resistor on the furthest end - he other end to the end entering your house)and run an earth from the other side of resistor to a rod in the ground. It changes the directionality (the pickup pattern or lobes)and also significantly reduces noise. I said 'sort of' because beverage antenna are usually a few miles long

Power chargers and computers generate massive amounts of noise - best to turn them all off when using a radio - if you can.

Preselectors (attached to a wire) and AM loop antenna are another 2 ways of significantly improving the reception.