Usually out of boredom I will tune through the LW band. My DX398 will only tune from 153-519KHz for it's LW. I have done a bit of beacon CW listening just out of curiosity and have picked up some that are easily hundreds of miles away.
When it comes to transmitting I have only experimented a little bit. It's really not hard at all putting together a LW transmitter, the hard part is loading up an antenna to such low frequencies. It can be done and I have seen where people have had great success but when I start looking at those huge loading coils they use to get a low "Q" and the 50 some foot long wire antennas I start to see how it's a bit out of my league at the moment.
It took me a good while to figure out how to get a signal out on the AM MW band properly with a short antenna and crappy ground system. Longwave is similar just much more extreme.
One of these days when I get the itch I will do some experimenting on LW. Longwave is one of those radio bands that I can see there being great untapped potential in. It's too bad the US has never really taken advantage of it for licensed broadcasting like we have with MW.
Post by RadioFreeEuropea on Jul 4, 2011 11:24:10 GMT -6
Yep, i have 25m copper cable under the ground, need more. I made coil around the Pringles can, about 300 turns 1mm emaled CU. Two position switch add 1000pf or 2000pF over it whit 100-1450pF tunecap. Today i get in the antenna about 5-8Watss power, hard to tune cap, need verniedial for it.
RFEI SW MW LW FM Freeradio broadcasting isn't crime, it's my way life!
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