school me on old shortwave radios (1 Viewer)

[ChadHahn]

If you are still looking for an AM radio look for a GE Superadio. They were built to pull in AM stations from long distances.

 

[NT5A]

so i want to buy one of those big old shortwave radios to replace the old ghetto blaster at our cabin. all we use it for is to tune in to an am radio station 100 miles away and it doesn't do a great job of that anymore.

what's a good but inexpensive one to look out for?

ideally it should do a better job of picking up am radio stations 100 miles away than the receiver on an early 90s tape deck. otherwise, i guess i'd like something that can pick up other cool signals, preferably using the built in antenna or a cheap unobtrusive antenna. vhf weather would be nice but not essential. the tape deck is big and bulky so a replacement the same is fine, but i'd rather not go fully old school and stick to transistors.

i can power it off 110volt ac from our inverter (sine wave) or off batteries.

i had a look at ebay auctions and the "grundig" models i immediately thought of go for hundreds of dollars.

any suggestions on something that will do the job for less?

If all you really want to do is to receive AM broadcast signals, it's hard to do better than just about any car radio connected to as long a piece of wire as you can manage for an antenna - even 25 feet or so would do well, but if you are in the woods, stretch out 100 feet or so as high in the trees as you can manage. Also, grounding the radio to a cold water pipe - or well casing - could make a big difference YMMV.