Best RX's for long distance anorak signals....

[FMEnjoyer]

I think a great deal of my TECSUN 310 and 310ET. If you know of very good FM receivers then list them it can help people find more stations to listen to. I am pretty sure most of the signals would be in the noise on lesser radio's.

List anything you like FM radio receiver wise.

[King Croccy]

Sony XDR-F1HD, XDR-S3HD, XDR-S10HDiP they are the best for dx'ing weak signals.

Any handheld radio with a tef6686/7 is pretty good also.

[Albert H]

I use an old school Sony ICF7600GR as my portable receiver, and a Technics ST-GT550 tuner on my desk. Both are synthesised and both don't suffer from overload from a nearby rig under test. Both receivers have exceptional sensitivity and selectivity, and both give a particularly low distortion audio output.

The '7600 looks a bit tatty these days because it has been all over the world since I've had it. I bought it new in the 90s.

The Technics tuner is a late 80s product from my time designing stuff for Panasonic / Technics, and has a slightly unusual front-end circuit, with a varicap-tuned cascode RF amplifier, which accounts for its sensitivity.

[Uksoundz]

Tef6686/7 units are now the best receivers IMHO. You can even hook them up to computers and have them scan 24/7 and upload logs etc

[shuffy]

Tef6686/7 units are now the best receivers IMHO. You can even hook them up to computers and have them scan 24/7 and upload logs etc

I've done exactly that. I bought one of the "desktop" TEF's on a whim and when I realized what it could do and how good the receiver was, I bought some bits from aliexpress for a few quid and made a headless one. It's connected to a discone and scans the whole band every 15 mins doing a "delta" on certain empty frequencies (not many of those up here sadly).

Otherwise, TECSUN PL-310ET, was my main radio for pirate listening until recently but mostly for portable use these days.

[Uksoundz]

Tef6686/7 units are now the best receivers IMHO. You can even hook them up to computers and have them scan 24/7 and upload logs etc

I've done exactly that. I bought one of the "desktop" TEF's on a whim and when I realized what it could do and how good the receiver was, I bought some bits from aliexpress for a few quid and made a headless one. It's connected to a discone and scans the whole band every 15 mins doing a "delta" on certain empty frequencies (not many of those up here sadly).

Otherwise, TECSUN PL-310ET, was my main radio for pirate listening until recently but mostly for portable use these days.

I’ve actually got a couple of headless units running myself. I use a plugin which scans the band for any changes and logs those changes. Good for tropo and E events.

[radionortheast]

Yeah the tef86 is all you need and someone called Taylor in your dm's, I suppose theres a difficulty when it comes to getting pocket radios for this purpose, ones that use the headphones have good selectivity and sensitivity, that don't have a protruding telescopic aerial. I kind of use one here that i've repaired many times, its 13 years old, unfortunately they don't make a replacement now. It was an anjan, cool little thing, I used to get christmas cards from the seller as I go two and a tecsun , I had problem with it, there was a large difference in volume between a weak signal and a strong signal, so it couldn't be used. I've had quite afew other pocket radios that have this problem too, the sensitivity is good you can't walk around with them without been deafened.
The sangean dts 250 is your next best bet, both good reception on fm and mw, you can tune to the dutch pirates on it at night, since it goes all the way up to 1710khz.
I used to have a big bulky hifi tuner separate years ago, with these you could mess about with them and get alot of sensitivity, you could get them going for sure, I don’t have room for those tuners here, its hard to get the same selectivity you get with a dsp/tef radio

[teckniqs]

Yeah you definitely want something with the TEF chip inside, they are the best out there especially for FM and very affordable.

....I am currently using both a QODOSEN DX-286 and a TEF6686.
I also have a Sony XDR-F1HD but prefer to use the DX-286 for everything now.

[shuffy]

Yeah you definitely want something with the TEF chip inside, they are the best out there especially for FM and very affordable.

The AM performance isn't bad either. There's one amongst the cluster of Bedford SDRs I was playing with recently off the back of the "270" thread. On medium wave it was as good or better than the webSDR.

http://remoteradio.changeip.org:8087/

With different TEF receivers though there seems to be some variation in how they connect the AM antenna, and in the electronics between the antenna and the chip. The ubiquitous aliexpress module I used is "all-in-one" and the FM performance matches other TEF receivers. AM is pretty grim but it is around a lot of noisy kit. Also the prices are currently lots higher than when I bought mine.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008196759859.html

....I am currently using both a QODOSEN DX-286 and a TEF6686.

I clocked the DX-286 on aliexpress a while back and thought it looked great - like a PL-310 but with a TEF6686 rather than a Si4734. I'm now extremely tempted.