Kenwood R-5000 some interesting observations about attenuation in the mediumwave band

[@SouthernIllinoisShortwave]

Isn't it funny how we can have something for years and not realize a feature or function on it? I've had this happen with music. I'll hear a song on a movie or TV show and really like it, only to discover I've had that song on one of my vinyl albums in my collection for years I just never played that track. It's those little moments. The wow, I never knew it did that, never noticed that, or I didn't know I had that. 😊

[@ve6jy]

I wrote about this "decades" ago in the CIDX Messenger. There is a fixed att in the MW circuit just clip R9 and/or R11 and jumper R10. Just clipping one of the resistors does remove most of the attenuation, should be good enough.

[@OfficialSWLchannel]

Thanks Don, I might go and clip it.

[@BillO964]

I have not played around with medium wave yet. Going to have to give it a try. I really like my new Tecsun s2200x. I finished putting up a EFRW antenna from the second story of my house and about 80 feet to the garage peak. I included a 9:1 balun. A huge improvement in worldwide reception. The antenna did fine in the snowstorm this week here in eastern Maryland. Thank for the great SWL channel. Your advise is very helpful to me as a new-be listener. Can you talk about attenuation a little please? I am not familiar with that term or the function on my radio.

[@wf7ihomebrew]

I’m a long time ham and friend of Gilles. Attenuation is a feature on many radios that just limits the incoming radio signal strength. Sometimes it is useful for very strong signals, to knock them down a bit to lower distortion. I have found it more useful in simpler radios. Often the top end radios have great strong signal handling and don’t need it except in extreme situations (like the ham radio Field Day contest with lots of transmitters right next door).

[@cnick6]

The R-5000 uses a three-stage harmonic trap filter (LPF) that they claim was to reduce possible interference from MW BCB stations. Obviously this is a 'quick fix' and a more expensive solution would be to design a proper MW BPF filter. My guess as to why they did this: when this receiver was designed, the MW band was considered to be the nuisance band for most shortwave enthusiasts. Yes, it functions from 0.5 to 1.6 Mhz.

[@wf7ihomebrew]

My much newer Kenwood TS-990 (the flagship) does the same thing! I would have to check but I believe the TS-2000 also does this. It is annoying. There may be a way to turn it off on the 990 but I haven’t investigated.