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I'm gonna go grab an E5 tomorrow, a local place has them on sale. I pretty much went from "meh, shortwave" to "buying an E5 at my earliest convenience" between the OP and page 2 of this thread. So add like $120 (Canadian) to the price tally. I just got hired to work on a cruise ship for 6 months, and as such, I'll be using this radio pretty far from large urban areas. I'll be going to Alaska, Hawaii, Panama, and the Caribbean/Mexico region. Are there any especially cool things I'll be able to hear that I might not be able to head back home (Vancouver)?
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Jun 17, 2007 07:30
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 20:17 |
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So, I managed to score myself an Eton E5. Is $120 CAD (like $105-$110 USD) a good price for one? Also, is my plan to listen to it when I'm on the cruise ship flawed? I just realized that the cabin I'll be in has no windows, is on a lower deck, and behind a steel hull. It's pretty much a floating Faraday cage.
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Jun 18, 2007 19:04
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AstroZamboni posted:Very good price. They typically run 150 US for a new one. Did I mention this was for a brand new one? Apparently they were having a clearance sale. Grundig G4000As were $99 CAD.  Haven't picked up much yet, but since I'm using the internal antenna, indoors, during the daytime, I'm not expecting much. I'll string up the huge antenna tonight and see what I can find. By the way, was the "use the ship's hull" comedy option actually viable? It IS a huge chunk of metal, but it's also pretty much ground.
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Jun 19, 2007 03:13
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Question... does the telescoping antenna on my E5 even do anything for shortwave? Also, hmm, I wonder why I'm getting poo poo reception... with the radio sitting three inches from a laptop using wifi and bluetooth. Problem solved. I found some CW at 262kHz standing out on the balcony, and after finding a pen and a pad, it appears he was saying "VF" every few seconds, followed by a 5-second steady tone. Automated beacon of some sort? EDIT: ..._ .._. is "VF", right?
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Jun 19, 2007 07:32
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Also, I hate you forever, OP, because I'm going to be listening to this poo poo all night. Hopefully it gets easier when I get away from civilization (but have to start competing with ship's communications and radar and such). Is there much chance of me getting Radio Habana from Vancouver? It seems to be what all the cool kids are listening to. Where might I find it? SoundMonkey fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Jun 19, 2007 |
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Jun 19, 2007 07:57
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Pardon the double post, but I do believe I just found my first ever crazy religious broadcast. If I may quote: "The ox is a tremendous beat for physical labor. It is slower than the horse, slower than the rear end, and smaller than an elephant, but it will last and last and last. This is god's plan. If he wants to, he can pull up the attribute of the ox spirit, or the lion spirit, or the man spirit." This is probably the best thing I've ever heard.
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Jun 19, 2007 09:27
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Shastao posted:I tried looking at non-directional beacons to see if there was one on 262 kHz but the only match here http://www.airnav.com/navaids/ was for CTM (meaning the signal would just be -.-. - -- over and over) in Chetumal, Mexico. It's in the general range as those sorts of things. No idea, otherwise. It seems doubtful unless you're close to it, although it is broadcast at 1200 watts(!) compared to say the 25 watts for the NDB at my local airport. The signal was weak and barely audible due to interference - it may not even have been at exactly 262, that was just where the background noise was low enough to hear it. Found one later on that night broadcasting "XX" in code. Which, upon closer inspection (thanks for the link!) was Abbotsford NDB. Which makes sense, since I'm not twenty miles from Abbotsford. Also, to the poster above, how much was that Sony antenna?
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Jun 20, 2007 01:40
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So, now that I'm totally a SW addict... I have the wire antenna that came with my E5 (20-30', I'd guess) strung up inside my apartment (pretty much line of sight to my balcony). My main listening problem is insane amounts of interference - if I plug in the external antenna, I get probably twice as much signal, and like six times as much interference. This leads me to believe that my issue is antenna placement. Would out on the balcony be loads better? The best results I've heard so far were with me standing out on the balcony using the telescopic antenna. The only thing is that if I put the antenna on the balcony, I'll probably have to double it back once or twice, my balcony isn't that big. I've also heard a lot more at sunset today than I did yesterday - yesterday may just have been a bad day for whatever reason.
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Jun 20, 2007 04:57
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StarkRavingMad posted:The wire antenna doesn't do much for me. I've strung it across my balcony, around my windowsill, threw it up a tree, up on my roof...no matter what I do, I'm getting better results with the normal telescoping antenna. Hell, I even rigged up my own wire all over the place, and I'm STILL better off with the E5's pathetic little antenna. I don't know if the E5's built-in is that good, or if I just live in an area where the added interference is too great. I won't disrespect the wire antenna again. I strung it up on my balcony earlier, and while scanning around, I found what I thought was some British guy on 9615kHz. Very clear, like a 4/5, so I thought it was somewhere local. Nope. Radio loving New Zealand, coming in clearer than anything else I've heard in that band. There was some interference, but I could jot enough down to write a plausible QSL... which will be my first  .
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Jun 20, 2007 06:51
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Halah posted:As nerdy as it sounds, I'm telling you it just might become quite the hobby. Not that I know anything about that, of course. It already has, really. I can't seem to pick up much of anything at all during the daytime, on any band, but at night, I rarely see it scan more than 20kHz before something else pops up. I have yet to hear anything non-standard (so far: preachers, nav beacons, and news broadcasts), but I hope to hear a numbers station or some other cool thing soon.
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Jun 20, 2007 08:02
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Halah posted:Daytime sucks. At least until the Sun gets its rear end in gear. Nighttime is where it's at right now. So far, local (CBC), what I believe is BBC, some random station out of WA just below broadcast AM (er, 515kHz I think it was?), and something that I think was in Farsi. I really need to get some kind of logbook, because the cycle of find station - grab laptop - lose station due to laptop isn't all that fun. So far, the only thing I've got an actual positive ID on, and been able to hear and comprehend programming from, was Radio New Zealand.
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Jun 20, 2007 08:43
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Mike B posted:I have a sweet little Grundig that I found once upon a time. Sometimes I like to take it out at night and tune in. I'm on the coast so I can often get crazy stuff from across the sea. Nothing like a woman chanting madly in Chinese coming in and out of signal with doppler effect to give you the heebie jeebies. I've actually freaked a few folks out with it, just scanning, scanning, then BOOM out of the void "AND THE LORD SPOKETH TO ISHMAEL AND HE DID BURNETH FOR HIS SINS, SINS, SINSkkkksssqqqrkkkkkk- Ni chao pai hoi-skkkkkkk AND HE DID SIN UPON THE EARTH WITH THE FIREYsskkkkkkkk" I did almost that exact same thing - I'd forgotten I'd left the radio scanning, and it hadn't found anything for a while, then the sun went down and BOOM, crazy preacher out of loving nowhere. Scared me shitless. Also, half the comedy is the commercials on some of these stations - I heard at least four different quack methods for curing cancer advertised last night.
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Jun 20, 2007 21:49
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AstroZamboni posted:MWUHAHAHHAHAHA! No, GBS is about using your newfound hobby to gently caress with people. There's this meth head who lives on the first floor of my building. He's a general annoyance to everyone else who lives here, always acting sketchy and trying to sell you stolen property and whatnot. Also, obviously, he's super paranoid. So I burned CD 1 of the Conet Project and left it in an envelope outside his door. This will end well.
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Jun 21, 2007 21:34
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Milka posted:God, I could swear there was a site like this maybe a year or two ago. It would just check the current time and give you a list of numbers stations currently broadcasting and the frequencies. If you find this, let me know, because I've been frustrated all night trying to hear some faint voice through interference, only to find out it's just another crazy jesusfreak.
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Jun 22, 2007 09:43
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Halah posted:Anyone want to fill in what I'm missing? You could add the standard responses for QSL responses/cards, as in, what the standard scale is, whether 1 is good or bad on which scale, etc. Also, what exactly radio folk think of in terms of what 'moderate' interference is. People who are used to listening to local FM stations may well classify mild fuzziness as "extreme".
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Jun 23, 2007 09:40
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Thanks for the protips on that, I've been mistakenly calling natural noise 'interference' for a while now I guess. Y'know, the kind of natural noise that sounds like satan violating a screech owl. Also, I thought the fading in/out was passing trucks or something. Now I know. A question... if I'm looking to pick up some USB/LSB stuff, would it be a good strategy to switch to SSB on the receiver, dial the fine tune all the way up to USB, and hit scan? Or is this just likely to make the preachers I find sound really hosed up?
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Jun 23, 2007 10:44
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Halah posted:In my opinion, it would be best to figure out what stations you want to hear. Why are you concentrating on the sidebands? At any rate, if the signal is strong enough, you can probably scan without SSB. The radio will catch the signal, and it will sound like crap. Switch to SSB and fine tune up or down until you catch it. No real reason, I've just never found anything SSB yet, so I wanted to give it a go and see what it sounded like both with and without SSB turned on, so I could better identify them in the future.
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Jun 23, 2007 20:35
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Canuck-Errant posted:Well, it looks like I got the only E5 left in Saskatchewan as a (5-days-early) birthday present. And it was on clearance, too. I put mine outside on my balcony, and it seemed to work pretty well. I did, however, get only slightly worse results using the internal telescopic antenna. I guess which you use depends on where you want to listen - if I had a nice chair on the balcony, I'd probably just take the radio out there and use the antenna on it.
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Jun 23, 2007 23:23
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nmfree posted:If this has been mentioned already, my apologies... That hasn't been mentioned, thanks for the tip. So, for the Eton, would I just touch the tip of the 1/8" connector to the telescopic antenna? I'm assuming only the tip is used, or that both sleeve and tip are tied together or something, since there's only one wire. Is this correct? Also, will I get decent results just attaching the antenna to something big and metal? I ask because the person in the apartment next to me has their entire balcony enclosed in chicken wire to keep squirrels out, and it seems like it could be a great antenna.
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Jun 24, 2007 03:53
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 20:17 |
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AstroZamboni posted:And to the new owners of E5s, can I find out how much you paid for them to add to the financial drain in the OP? Thanks! I paid $99 CAD for mine, not including taxes. I paid an additional $22 for hot-poo poo 2500 mAh NiMH batteries, if that counts. Oddly enough, the Eton E5 was going for $20 less than the Grundig G4000A, when it appears to be an equal or superior radio.
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Jun 24, 2007 05:15
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