Midday C.Crane Shoot-Out

It rained here Sunday morning, which postponed my plans to move leaves. Plan B was to play radio and that's what I did.

I now own five models of C.Crane receivers and after FARMERIK published a comparison of Sony receivers he owned on the Ultralight DX list, I decided to compare my C.Cranes in a similar manner using the radio's stock AM antennas.

I parked each radio in the same spot on my radio desk and in turn tuned across the AM band counting the number of stations heard. I did this between 1550 and 1655 UTC (1050 to 1155 local time/EST). My location is in Wolcott, Connecticut (41° 37' 48" N, 72° 56' 43" W) at 912 feet ASL. Radio conditions were flat.

Here are the results:

CC Radio 2E Enhanced: 60
CC Skywave: 60
CC SW Pocket: 53
CC Radio SW: 50
CC Pocket: 45

The CC Skywave and CC Radio 2E heard the same 60 stations with two exceptions: the Skywave heard a station on 850 kHz that the 2E did not and the 2E heard a station on 920 kHz that the Skywave did not.

Comparing the Skywave and the 2E, their sensitivity is similar on the AM band in my opinion, but the Skywave is more selective. 1070 kHz is a problem area at my location because the 50 kW of WTIC on 1080 kHz blasts through here 24/7. Until I added the Skywave (and an Elecraft KX3) to my radio shack, I never heard anything but QRM from WTIC on 1070 kHz. With the Skywave, I’ve logged four stations on 1070.

On the other hand, the 2E sounds much better than the Skywave. Of course, size matters and you would expect the 2E to sound better than its pint-sized cousin. The 2E is the best sounding AM radio I have ever owned.

WERB

The mystery station that I monitored Tuesday evening on 94.5 MHz was a little stronger Wednesday evening on the C.Crane CC Pocket AM/FM/WX Radio and C.Crane CCRadio 2E Enhanced; strong enough to be able to understand some of the chatter in between songs. Near the top of the hour (2257 UTC), I clearly heard the station identification: WERB, which is located at the Berlin (Connecticut) High School, 10 miles east, transmitting a mere 24 Watts!

I also logged WNSH on 94.7 MHz earlier in the day (1647 UTC) on my car radio. The country and western station was transmitting 23.5 kW from Newark, NJ, 90 miles west-southwest.

94.5

Tuesday evening, I was monitoring 94.5 MHz with my C.Crane CC Pocket AM/FM/WX Radio and I could hear a station way down in the mud. It was playing Rat Pack tunes: a string of Frank Sinatra songs followed by a Dean Martin song. There was very little chatter between songs and the signal was so weak that I could not understand a word of what was being said.

I decided to try my other radios. The C.Crane CCRadio-SW detected nothing on 94.5, while the C.Crane CCRadio 2E Enhanced heard the signal at the same muddy level as the C.Crane CC Pocket.

I left the 2E tuned to 94.5 while I worked in the shack. Suddenly, a different station came up from out the noise at 2311 UTC and put in a solid S-3 signal for about four minutes: WPST running 50 kW out of Trenton, New Jersey, 140 miles southwest.

After WPST faded away, another signal came up from out of the noise at 2322 UTC with an S-2 signal: WJMN running 9.2 kW, 100 miles east-northeast from a 1200-foot tower in Newton, Mass, just southwest of Boston. The tower is one of the big four towers in the Newton-Needham area that you cannot miss when traveling in that neck of the woods.

After WJMN faded away, the Rat Pack station was still wailing away and then it faded out, too. I will monitor 94.5 again this evening to see if I can pin it down.

WKAL

I have not had many opportunities to DX with the replacement C.Crane CC Pocket AM/FM/WX Radio that C.Crane sent me last week to replace the unit that had a faulty BAND pushbutton. However, I turned the new radio on at the top of the hour Friday evening (0200 UTC Saturday) and heard the station identification for WKAL in Rome, New York. Transmitting 1 kW on 1450 KHz, 169 miles northeast, WKAL is a new station in my AM radio log and was heard using the CC Pocket’s internal antenna.

50 New Loggings

After reading some positive reviews of the C.Crane CC Pocket AM/FM/WX Radio, I decided to add the radio to my collection. I ordered it last Thursday and it arrived in the mail last Saturday afternoon. Saturday evening, I installed batteries in the radio and began using it.

Right out of the box, the pushbutton that switches between the AM, FM and weather bands was difficult to use. It required a lot of pressure in order to function. I used the radio for a few hours Saturday evening and the more I used the radio, the more pressure was required to get the band pushbutton to work.

Sunday morning, I used the radio for about 15 minutes and the problem persisted, got worse, and then the band pushbutton stopped functioning altogether with the radio tuned to the FM band.

I contacted C.Crane and they sent me a replacement radio which arrived yesterday.

While I waiting for the replacement, I decided to make lemonade with my lemon and fill up my FM log, which had only 21 stations beforehand. While DXing the FM band, I used the radio’s external FM wire antenna which plugs into the radio’s earphone jack. Between Saturday and Wednesday evening without enhanced propagation, I added 50 new entries into my FM radio log!

The top three DX stations were WGBH in Boston (100 miles east-northeast on 89.7 MHz), WWLI in Providence (77 miles east on 105.1 MHz) and WVEI in Westerly, Rhode Island (68 miles east on 103.7 MHz). My loggings included a handful of low-powered stations including 10-watt W227AJ in Northford, Connecticut (19 miles southeast on 93.3 MHz), which was the lowest powered station of the bunch.

By the way, out of the box, the band pushbutton on the replacement radio works normally and does not require any more effort to use than the other buttons on the radio. After I give the new radio a full workout, I will write a full review, but so far I am very impressed with its sensitivity and selectivity on the FM band.