Philco Model 37-61 Short Wave Reception - Printable Version

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+--- Thread: Philco Model 37-61 Short Wave Reception (/showthread.php?tid=2116)

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Philco Model 37-61 Short Wave Reception - Guest - 12-22-2009

I just successfully completed the electronic refurb of a model 37-61. This is an AM/SW receiver with a 20' wire connected to terminal 1 and another 20' wire connected to terminal 2. The ground link on terminal 3 is not connected to terminal 2 or 4. During the alignment using a signal generator, the signal strength/output was almost the same for both bands. But, the actual signal reception is quite different. The AM stations in the Los Angeles area are received with plenty of gain/volume. The AM section performs very well. The short wave section appears to be performing properly too based upon the signal generator readings but does a very poor job of picking up signals on the SW band which is 5.7 to 18.2 Mhz. At full volume I can tune the entire SW dial and pick up dozens of very weak carriers but too weak to be useable. Night time reception was the same. Question: Is this the best performance for this model or is there a problem that I have yet to uncover? Looking forward to your suggestions. Thanks.

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Re: Philco Model 37-61 Short Wave Reception - Chuck Schwark - 12-22-2009

This model is not a DX type sw receiver, so it will need a good ground and at least 20-30 foot long wire antenna (preferably outdoors and high up as possible) for reasonable reception on SW. Also, back then SW stations were booming out with higher power and targeting the US more frequently. Also SW reception generaly right now ise not the greatest anyway. A ground and an antenna with as much wire as you can string up will help the best.

Chuck

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Re: Philco Model 37-61 Short Wave Reception - Guest - 12-23-2009

Thank you for your advice. The one thing I have not done is ground the radio. I will try that to see if I get any improvement.

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