Need MW Receiver Purchasing Advice

[ChazTheDxer]

Hi guys, with this century's current dearth of exciting catches on the shortwave bands, i.e. Radio RSA, Swiss Radio International, ELWA, etc., I've slowly found myself heading in a new direction to medium wave DX since it's somewhat more diverse for international catches these days. My problem is I've spent the last few years trading in SW receivers like the Icon 75, Panasonic RF- 4900, Dx-302 , etc, you know, different affordable vintage receivers just for the fun of it on shortwave. Now I'm looking for an all-band table-top receiver that has fine selectivity and sensitivity on the medium wave bands. I'm looking for something semi -vintage like the above receivers, in that price range hoping, to trade my dx-302 on eBay and make a profit enough to buy something in the $299 to $350 range, I want something that will allow me to separate the 10 kilohertz divisions of medium wave into being able to hear a foreign language broadcast on a weak station well enough that I can identify it without flamethrower like WABC covering everything up for 10 kilohertz. Or an untelligible hash of week close-by stations on a local channel like 1390khz. I like something with a lot of dials to fiddle with, and sounds like I need something with a pre-selector, pre- amp, band spread, etc. I would like to have something with a digital readout yet a little bit vintage, don't want to be constantly wondering if I'm really tuning into a station in Spain versus a station in Mexico because I can't tell if I'm on 871 or 778 kilohertz with an analog dial. For the first time i'm going to bypass a straight long wire and try to do a horizontal loop around my yard which is about a half acre I doubt I'm going to get a thousand feet in a circle, a little over half that maybe.With the right receiver choice, i'm sure to get way better than I'm getting now with a 75' long wire and a dx-302 with a dirty volume pot. My dx-302 is in near-perfect cosmetic condition, all lights, meters and dials working, it came from an estate sale , and came with dirty pots which I cleaned exteriorly and that fixed it into beign a great receiver for about a year. Had the radio for about 2 years. the only problem with it is the volume pot became scratch again and I don't want to open it up, for cleaning. No typical issues with the manin tuning dial cord travel or anything. So if I'm able to get 250 to 300 out of it I don't mind adding $100 of my own money or so to get up to the 350 or Lord forbid 400 dollar price range, LOL. Some people on this forum may turn me backward and just recommend something like the Panasonic RF 4900, I had that about ten years ago, can't really remember it's performance on MW. I understand that a nice cleaned up find would maybe be a Hammerlund 140 x for what I'm trying to do but again I'm kind of looking for something with a digital readout as I've never really tried dxing with an analog. Since I was a teenager. i'm 53 now. Any ideas guys? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[BJ radionut]

http://www.mwcircle.org/mw_rec.htm

https://swling.com/blog/category/mediumwave/

http://dxtools.com/BestDXrx.htm