Topband: Bad Frequencies and Loop Pre-amps

[Roger Kennedy]

I have never received ANY harmonics or intermod products from any of our
British Medium Wave (AM) broadcast stations.  That's at several different
QTHs, some of which were quite near the transmitters. (and never heard of
anyone else having issues)

They have to meet VERY high specs . . . but also, most are less than 1kW !
(one of the stations I worked for had such a good Tx site - a salt marsh -
they had to turn the power down to 150 watts!) Even the very big ones are
usually only 10kW.

So no need to avoid the 9kHz harmonics as far as us Brits are concerned!

What IS a problem is all the Russian Navigation Beacons in the Baltic that
pretty much wipe out everything between 1810 and 1820 kHz, so please try and
avoid that part of the band if you want to work any EU !  (they sometimes
turn them all off . . . but they are on most of the time.)

The pre-amp I use on my 6ft 160m receiving loop is actually the design MFJ
use in their 1026 noise canceller (I have a 1025 but copied their preamp
design, as it uses the same pcb) . . . I get no intermod during contests,
even though many EU stations are 45dB over S9 !

Roger G3YRO