Handheld SW radio

[elliotg]

Morning chaps
Am looking for advice on buying a handheld SW radio. Am wanting to listen to Kinloss Rescue, Shanwick, 11175 etc. Does anyone have any they can recommend me to buy that has good sound etc and that has USB SSB etc? Cheers guys

[JGR]

You are looking into the ranges of the older receivers such as Yupiteru's MVT-7100 MVT-9000 MK1 or MK2, Alinco DJ-X2000. Yupiteru offer the best low band HF SSB receive, I have owned many a HF receiver but they tend not to come with SSB and all the modern offerings omit this feature for reasons unknown to me.

I use my MVT-9000 MK2 for all my short wave listening and amateur radio monitoring and it works very well, one thing I would suggest is you will require a better antenna than the stock one that is supplied, be that a large telescopic or small external antenna, remember to ground your antenna with a wire to say your radiator pipe via the outer coaxial plug as the static that builds up on an external receive antenna can blow your front end as these units are not designed for external antennas and of course they are very sensitive and you may need to enable the attenuator for clear reception.

[punkrocker62]

You could also consider and Eton G3 , not hand-held, but still small potable size
http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/eton-g3-globe-traveller-a89ju

[JGR]

My gosh that Eton G3 looks very similar in design to the Tecsun PL-660 which also has beat oscillator SSB and Air band, but the selectivity and image rejection is limited in a noisy environment.

[elliotg]

Cheers guys. Was looking at the Eton G3 so have reserved one to collect from store.

Cheers again

Elliot

[ezzie85]

Hi everyone
I've got an eton g3 as well. Unfortunately the aerial socked appears to be a 3.5mm jack like a headphone socket.
Does anyone know what these are called please? Are there converters / adapters to allow you to use an aerial with a more standard plug on it available anywhere? I wouldn't know what to look for at this stage.
Thanks

[kr0ne]

The Yaesu vx500 is another older scanner that has SSB...

[neil-c]

Hi everyone
I've got an eton g3 as well. Unfortunately the aerial socked appears to be a 3.5mm jack like a headphone socket.
Does anyone know what these are called please? Are there converters / adapters to allow you to use an aerial with a more standard plug on it available anywhere? I wouldn't know what to look for at this stage.
Thanks

They are available, my Degen came with a 3.5 mill jack to BNC converter. Try Maplins or Spectrum Communications http://www.spectrumcomms.co.uk/Aerials.htm

[ezzie85]

Thanks Neil.

I've bookmarked the site and will call them tomorrow. Some of their aerials sound really good.
Unusual you can't order online though.
Ezzie

[RadioPixie]

Hi everyone
I've got an eton g3 as well. Unfortunately the aerial socked appears to be a 3.5mm jack like a headphone socket.
Does anyone know what these are called please? Are there converters / adapters to allow you to use an aerial with a more standard plug on it available anywhere? I wouldn't know what to look for at this stage.
Thanks

You can get 3.5mm Jack plug to SO239 socket adapter. £1.50 from http://www.whwestlake.co.uk/westlake-pd ... onents.pdf

[radagast33]

ezzie85

You can order on-line just email what you want and your card details. The lady I dealt with couldn't have been more helpful and I received the goods the next day

I bought the long wire to use with my Tecun PL880 and can pull in some excellent DX

Kind regards

David GW7EMO

[scanhermit]

I have the Tecsun PL-660 and can testify that for the money and for what it is, it is a good radio. With the supplied 5m wire, I get European and US hams loud and clear, plus trans-atlantic aircraft.

It even has the VHF airband frequencies, though it won't auto-scan these. Another glitch is that you have to press the enter button to after inputting freqs between 1.7 and 2mhz. These are minor irritations on what I consider to be a well-made portable.

[DutchKiwi]

I have the Tecsun PL660 as well, and it is really good. Have a look at this link:

http://swling.com/blog/2014/04/results- ... shoot-out/

Cheers;
Ronald

[Radioshane]

ive got a few hf frequency books including marine frequencys is there a lot to listen to listen to on hf?