Car antennas & Radios

[Aaron Read]

I had a Blaupunkt CD-52 Casablanca car radio for several years in Boston 
when I was commuting daily from Brighton to Medfield and then Melrose to 
Bedford, and just driving all over hell and gone for consulting work. 
It had the SHARX I.F. filter and DSP tuning and it was the bee's knees 
for FM reception.  AM was only "decent", though.  But on FM it was a 
killer...especially on the left end of the dial where there's several 
smaller college stations jammed in on the same or adjacent frequencies.

When I moved to NYS, I had the opportunity to put in an HD Radio, one of 
the early-model Kenwoods that was the add-on-tuning module style.  Old 
enough that it didn't even support multicasting.  At first I thought the 
reception was "okay", maybe "pretty decent"...but I suspected my old 
Blau might be better.

Then I took the Kenwood out and put the Blau in and suddenly discovered 
what a dog that Blau was compared to the Kenwood!  It wasn't that the 
Kenwood was worse, it was that I was inadvertently trying to listen to 
stations I had no business receiving, considering how far away I was! :)

Later I got a multicast-enabled version of the tuner, and then a JVC 
KDHDW10 HD Radio and have been very pleased with the results.  In fact, 
the only reason I'm considering replacing the JVC is that it doesn't 
support RDS.  But I can get 4kW Class A WEOS (in full HD!!!) when parked 
at the campus of Corning Community College, about 60 miles away and WELL 
outside our 40dBu contour.  Check out this R-L map:

http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WEOS&service=FM&status=L&hours=U

You can just see Corning hidden by the "n" in "Pattern" along the bottom.

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
Aaron Read                  |  Finger Lakes Public Radio
friedbagels@gmail.com       |  General Manager (WEOS & WHWS-LP)
Geneva, NY 14456            |  www.weos.org / www.whws.fm

As far as radios go, you might be able to look at the receive specs and 
get an idea of a good aftermarket radio. But, I was dissapointed with a 
new Blaupunkt's reception a few years ago, though the sound quality was 
good on both AM & FM.

Mark Casey, K1MAP
near Springfield, MA