Re: [IRCA] ANNUAL CAR RADIO QUERY

[Bruce Portzer <bportzer@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Pete

Of the cars I've owned, my favorite was in a '69 Ford Torino, which did 
a nice job of receiving  most of the clear channel stations back when 
the channels were actually clear.  Sometimes I could hear Spanish in the 
background under WBAP WCCO and the like.  I remeember once driving 
around Los Angeles with the thing tuned to 834 listening to Radio 
Belize.  When house hunting here in Seattle in the mid 70s, I used ot to 
do street appraisals of rf conditions by seeing how well I could get WSM 
(long before  we had stations on 650 in Vancouver & Sacramento).

Runner up was the one in a 84 Ford Tempo.  The car was a piece of 
garbage but the radio was decent.  My best catch on it was CHAM-820, 
plus several TP hets white driving to work (no audio unfortunately).

The worst car radio I ever owned was also in a Ford, in this case a 76 
F-250 pickup.  50kw stations vanished about 40 miles from their 
transmitters, and lowe powered stations were of course that much worse.

I currently have an 02 Saab 9-5, which has a fairly good radio.  I heard 
KSTP & WOAI several times while driving home from work last winter.  At 
times WOAI was strong enough to stop the seek function.  It has tuning & 
volume controls in the steering wheel, which is a nice convenience, but 
manual tuning is awkward (you hold down the seek button until it beeps 
and then push it again to start tuning.  If you linger on a freq more 
than a second or two, it exits the manual tuning mode and you have to 
hold the seek button down again to restart manual tuning).  On the 
positive side, the radio can be programmed for either 9 or 10 kHz spacing.

Bruce

Pete Taylor wrote:
> I know we go through this annually but things change as new radios  
> come out. I am in the market for a "new" pre-owned (aka "used") car  
> so would appreciate your sharing your experiences:
>
> A. What "old" car radios have been the best for DXing for you? I  
> wouldn't buy a car specifically for the radio but as long as I am  
> looking around, I  might as well make this a consideration.
> B. Regardless of the car, what reasonably functional car radio would  
> you (or did you) go out of your way to buy?
>   
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