Well, that explains why 10Mhz seemed like 11Mhz on your rig. You can find some inexpensive signal generators on ebay: BK 2050 RF Signal Generator - eBay (item 170307567336 end time Mar-08-09 20:51:09 PDT)
It sounds like you can get a fair price for your radio on ebay. A lot of times collectors like old radios like that. Before you sink money into a signal generator, you might consider whether you're better off selling it, saving the signal generator money, and buying a litte newer SW radio. Another thing to consider would be selling it all and purchasing an older HF Ham radio that also has general receive (most do). You could probably find a decent older Yaesu or Kenwood for a pretty reasonable price, get your ham license and then both listen AND talk
Something to think about?
Yes, you have gotten me thinking about it. More on that below.
I decided to improve my antenna a little. Did some review reading about basic dipoles and folded dipoles and the like. I have a 15 foot piece of coax here I was going to use to connect the dipole to the radio. But then I saw these issues about impedance matching of the feeding line to the imped. of the antenna. The radio manual itself shows that if a dipole is used, each half is connected to a different terminal in back of the radio. So I thought - "Why use a feed line at all?" Why not just attach each half of the dipole directly to it's own radio terminal? For starters, that seemed like the quickest and easiest thing to do - and maybe it would even be better than using a coax or twin TV ant wire feed line; so that is what I did. I kept the original "antenna" out there on the balcony under the roof and strung another wire temporarily inside my place diagonally across the room.
I have gotten better reception with this arrangement, though I am not all that thrilled about it. On AM band I did pick up a Seattle station and a Los Angeles station, along with more Spanish-speaking stations. But still nothing from across the Pacific Ocean. With my dad's old HEathkit HB 200 ( I think that model) I used to get a lot of AM stations from Eastern Europe in the late evenings. I am not finding ANY of that now with this radio. It seems odd to me because this Lafayette seems to be constructed to be a very substantial radio that you could almost through off the roof without damaging the case. The HB 200 was flimsy and trashy with very poor selectivity - but it seems to have 5 or 10 times more sensitivity than this KT320 Lafayette. I never had any serious antenna but a wire on the Heathkit either so that's not what it is.
LICENSING etc
Selling things is a lot of "detail work" - which I hate doing. Maybe Craig's list would be a quick way to sell the radio easily. I have quite a bit of small computer related stuff I could sell along with the KT320 and the "cheapie" on eBAY if I wanted to bother doing the whole eBAY thing. I know they make it very easy to set things up but one still has to take good quality pictures and write it all up very carefully. Worse than that, I don't like packaging things up and shipping them, those kinds of tasks and errands are the kinds of things I procrastinate forever and you can't do that with something you have sold on eBAY.
But anyway, I don't HAVE to sell things to carry forward, at least not right away.
I have been peeking around and found out the the Morse Code is no longer required for a license. So NOW, the licensing idea has MUCH more appeal. I have downloaded a number of PDF files for studying for the technician's level test. I could probably get through all that in a few weeks if I applied myself. Lately my "academic" study focus has been the learning of Spanish.
The big issue for me with licensing might be that my housing location would not allow for any "real" antenna. I am sure I could have one of those satellite dish antennas on my balcony, but anything else that is visible would be against the regulations around here.
Do you have any directions to point me for this antenna issue and for beginning level equipment?
Searching through the world of transceivers is a whole dimension different - with different criteria - than just for receivers. I need some good starting points for this.
I should mention, that I don't want to go through all this work just to talk on the radio to people who live within a hundred or two miles. If there is something of interest "out there" for me, I would think it would be people in other countries. It would be fun to practice my Spanish with someone by radio for example. And I want to learn Italian next and could practice with native Italian speakers by radio too.
The power needed (I would think) and other things for long distance like that probably require a higher level license. I could do that though - I am not intimidated by any of the material that I would need to study. The antenna might be the biggest problem for me - and if not that, then the cost.
As for the exams; the radio theory / electronics portions are the part I have the most training for already because of my MS in Physics and my past excursions into radio theory. Learning the regulations and that sort of thing would be the more boring part - but it's only memorization.
Should we take this discussion to a different area of the forum - since we are not talking about repairs now?
