Trio 9R- 59DS help needed.

[xrsteve2003]

Hi,
I'm completely new to this but i just bought this Trio radio to receive short wave and ham broadcasts. For an aerial I'm just using a length of 2 core speaker cable. One cable is earthed to a radiator in the house and the other runs outside the house for a few metres. Is this not suitable?

All i seem to get is AM reception that you can get on any radio. When you go on to the upper bands it just seems to be the same stuff over again. Can someone tell me is AM the same as medium wave?

Can you get short wave on this radio?

Should I be able to get ham broadcasts? What sort of aerial should I use?

Thanks, Steve.

[Station X]

Hello and welcome to the forums.

Do you have the user manual for your set?

These are often decried as glorified domestic receivers, but I rather like mine.

Your aerial should be as long as possible and as high as possible for best reception.

AM stands for Amplitude Modulation. It is used by broadcast stations on the long, medium and short wave bands. This receiver cannot receive long wave. Very few amateurs use AM, but you may catch some Amateur Radio AM stations on 3.615 Mhz.

Single Side Band or SSB is a special form of AM used by Radio Amateurs. Such signals may be Upper Side Band (USB) or Lower Side band (LSB).

Best place to look for these signals to start with is the 80 metre amateur band running from 3.5 to 3.8 MHz. Set the mode select switch to AM and tune for maximum "Donald Duck" effect using the band spread dial. Then set the mode switch to SSB and adjust the BFO control until the signal becomes intelligible. There's a knack to it, but you'll soon get it.

[xrsteve2003]

Great thanks for reply. I have a manual but wasn't sure if i was doing things right. Is earthing to a radiator correct and running a single lead outside correct? I wasn't sure if i was just going through medium wave as i was getting local radio stations. I will try a higher aerial.
Thanks,
Steve

[Silicon]

Do you have two binding posts labeled 'A' and 'E' and also an antenna socket marked 'ANT'?

If so, which connections are you using?

Radio interference inside your house will overload your aerial. Try to get the aerial outside.

[xrsteve2003]

Hi,
I just have A&E which I am using. No aerial socket. The instructions said to earth one so I used a radiator. Is a single piece of wire really all I should need for decent reception?
Cheers,
Steve

[Station X]

This receiver has just A and E terminals. The chassis is drilled for a coaxial aerial socket, but I've never seen one fitted.

An earth to a radiator and a length of wire for an aerial will be fine. Use the antenna trim control to peak the S Meter when receiving a signal.

I turned on my own set this morning and had no difficulty in hearing the 80 metre AM net and SSB signals.

[Andrew2]

I had one of these receivers when I was in my teens/early 20's and although they are certainly not the best in the world (mine drifted like the clappers on the higher bands) they were passably sensitive and easily good enough.
Back then, a simple 'short wire' aerial was all you really needed, as domestic noise levels were low. Sadly, noise levels have increased massively over recent years and a wire aerial will pick it up by the bucket load.
Try disconnecting the antenna then adjusting the S-meter pot (round the back) so the needle rests just above zero. Then re-connect the aerial and see what the noise level is. Whatever it is, you will not hear any signal below that level. Amateur signals are typically 20dB or more below typical broadcast levels.

[xrsteve2003]

When you say mode selector switch is that the function switch? The other switches I have is band selector. Do I put the band selector on ssb and if so which band selector is best first? Sorry I know nothing but am trying to learn!

[TrevorG3VLF]

You say that you used speaker twin cable. The earth and aerial wire should be separated because of capacitance between them. Any wire can be used for the aerial, bare or insulated, even galvanised iron. An egg insulator was the traditional way of terminating the wire but plastic such as a piece of polyethelene would do.


A radiator may be a noisy earth.

The bands are sometimes dead, you can check the condition of the bands by logging in to the secret bunker which has an SDR receiver.
Look up "hackgreensdr", most of the signals will be sideband and you can practise how to tune them in. Note that LSB is used below 10MHz and USB above.

[xrsteve2003]

OK thanks. Getting more stations now since I moved the aerial higher. Is there something I could use better than the radiator? Anybody selling a speaker I could use? I'm using headphones at the minute

[Station X]

The matching speaker for these radios is quite rare and I wouldn't want to part with mine.

It's nothing special though, just an 8 ohm elliptical speaker in a case to match the receiver. You can just use any 4 or 8 ohm impedance speaker wired to the appropriate terminals on the rear panel.

For a signal earth you could use an earth spike hammered into the ground, but I doubt it would be any better than the connection to the radiator. I assume you've scraped the paint off the attachment point?

[xrsteve2003]

Ok thanks. I have the wire wrapped around big metal nut at the end of the radiator.
Cheers,
Steve

[Phil G4SPZ]

Originally Posted by xrsteve2003

Can someone tell me is AM the same as medium wave? Can you get short wave on this radio?

This is a topic that many newcomers to short wave listening find hard to grasp at first.

AM stands for Amplitude Modulation, and is a "mode" by which the audio is modulated onto the radio frequency carrier wave. FM and SSB are also "modes", just different methods of impressing the audio onto the carrier.

Medium Wave is a "band" which, by convention, extends from around 500kHz to 1,600kHz, and this defines the frequency of the carrier wave. By convention, AM is used on Medium Wave.

Short Wave is a term describing a group of frequencies roughly between 3MHz and 30MHz, and is often split down into various sub-bands. For Short Wave broadcasts, you will hear talk of the 49 metre band, the 31 metre band and so on. These 'sub-bands' grew up around the propagation characteristics associated with various frequencies and thus their usefulness for international broadcasting at various times of day and night, as well as seasonal variations.

So, whilst it is technically possible to transmit AM, FM, SSB and any other mode of modulation on any waveband, it was found that certain "modes" gave better performance on certain "bands". Hence AM tends to predominate on Long Wave and Medium Wave and for Short Wave broadcasting, whereas FM is used for VHF broadcasting. AM is also possible at VHF and is still used for airband communications between about 118-130MHz.

Amateur radio operators largely use SSB (single sideband) or Morse (CW or Continuous Wave) modes within specific narrow frequency bands allocated to them. Listen around 3.5-3.8MHz, 7.0-7.2MHz and 14.0-14.35MHz for CW and SSB amateur transmissions. These are not technically 'broadcasts' as Amateurs are only licenced to send messages to other individual licenced stations, although short wave listeners are perfectly entitled to receive them.

I also have a Trio 9R-59DS receiver and agree with previous respondents that it has several shortcomings. However, they are very sensitive and with a decent antenna can give you hours of listening pleasure and entertainment. The short wave bands are largely dominated by powerful Chinese and Russian state-controlled broadcasters, but listen carefully and you will hear all sorts of other broadcasts of interest on the upper three wavebands provided on the receiver.

[David Long]

I had one of these. I agree with another input that they 'drifted like the clappers'. They also had appalling image problems, as I think the If was around 465Khz (so the image was less than 1mhz away) this is a fundamental problem with the superhet arrangement and why it is now common to find the first If of (say) 70Mhz. Frequency read out was to say iffy as well, because of 'string' driven dial arrangement. Difficult to say what you would commend them for! OK for MF listening.

[m0cemdave]

Yes, but they were a step up from the typical domestic receiver with a shortwave band.

This was an affordable "entry level" radio for budding enthusisasts who wanted to be able to listen to SSB and CW transmissions, and wanted a wider range of coverage.

These Trio's seem to have acquired collectible status along with the Heathkit Mohican and a few other sets of the period. They all have similar performance limitations, in particular with the image response on the highest range.
I recommend adding a passive preselector, which can be built as a simple construction project. But if you can find one for sale, a Marconi ZA54916 "Acceptor Unit" works wonders.

As for the original question, do you have a garden, and how big is it? A single wire to a washing line pole should be OK (or maybe use a metal cored washing line as the aerial), and even a wire run along the top of a hedge or fence will work. The biggest problem will be the high level of noise and interference caused by the cheap electronic technology that fills modern houses. Experimenting with the aerial location may help to reduce this.