AM DXing in Tucson.

[salero]

Newbee here, hello out there!

I am in Tucson, AZ & would like to be able to listen to KGO, 8.10, San Fran & KOA, 8.50, Denver at night.

I have the GE super radio 3 & the CC radio plus. I also have the CCrane Justice twin coil antenna.

Both stations come in clear for a while & then begin to drift & static increases. The Justice antenna boosts the station signal but also boosts the static just as much, so not really any help. I've moved the antenna around but there's no place where the interference isn't amplified along with the signal.

I'm begining to feel I'm just SOL with KGO & KOA but thought I'd ask before giving up.

I'd appreciate any suggestions anybody might have.

I'm enjoying looking the forums over & learning from old posts.

Salero

[Mike-CT]

I'd also like to listen to KGO and KOA at night, but that's a different story. I'm in CT.

But really, at night, skywave is going full steam with varying signal levels and noise and distortion (and IBOC on both stations is killing any adjacent channel station reception) so reception on your SR3 will vary from good to terrible.

I'm not sure what you mean by "drifting", though. Does the SR3 drift? I have one of those but haven't used it in a long while. I don't remember it drifting.

[K4NBF]

I get the impression that "drifting" is referring to the signal fading in and out, which you will get to some degree with any skywave signal.

I'm not 100% clear what the source of your "static" is, so I'll take a guess that it might be RFI - have you tried taking these portable radios outside, well away from any man-made sources of noise? If you are able to get the noise to drop down when you go outside, then I would walk around with the portable radio on a fairly blank channel and try to identify the source of the noise, and see if you can either avoid that item, unplug it, or whatever else to reduce the noise.

If the problem is just a weak signal, then I can't think of anything more other than equipment changes.

I suspect you have some sort of man-made noise, as I was able to get a very listenable signal on 850 KOA from California, and it is often strong enough to listen to clearly here in Tennessee as well, albeit with lots of fading and noise at times.

Just remember that you are always going to have to deal with some periods where the signal fades out and/or gets a bit distorted. This is a reality of long distance/skywave AM signals.