AUSTRALIAN AM STATION 6WF to Leave the AM band for FM

The transmitting tower for sunny Perth, Australia's ABC radio station 6WF, which is moving from the AM band to the FM band after decades of serving Perth and a large part of SW Western Australia.

If you look closely, you can see the Perth skyline in the far background. The tower is in the Perth suburb of Hamerslsy, in the northern part of the city. 

photo from ABC.net.au

A radio station I used to listen to -- at least when they had a shortwave relay -- is leaving the AM band for FM in late February this year, after 94 years on the AM band.

6WF, Perth, Australia's main ABC Radio outlet, is being moved to FM as the ABC determines that with more and more cars being FM only, taking 6WF off the AM band is the best way to serve listeners. The switchover from AM to FM will occur on February 23rd.

6WF-AM has been on the air in the Perth region for 94 years, as the transmitter installation and tower date from 1934.

For those who don't know it, Perth is a large city of two million people on the Indian Ocean, and it's the capital of Western Australia, Australia's largest state by area. Perth is also known as the 'most isolated capital city in the world', being that it is farther from other metros than nearly every other national or state capital on the planet.

A CITY WITH AN EXTENSIVE MUSICAL HISTORY

Perth is the city where late AC/DC singer Bon Scott lived as a kid, after his family moved there from Kirriemuir in Scotland. He got his musical start there as a singer for the Valentines. The Australian rock band INXS also got their careers kickstarted in Perth (they were in Perth for 10 months, as the 'Vegetables'). The lead guitarist for the Divinyls, Mark McEntee, was from Perth, and the excellent Aussie glam rock band Supernaut were also from Perth.

I used to listen to 6WF back when I got my first good Shortwave radio, my Realistic DX-160, which was a Christmas gift. With that radio I listened to a lot of different stations, including Radio Australia, various Indonesian stations at night, 'tropical band' radio stations out of Venezuela and Columbia, and 6WF.

SHORTWAVE RELAY STATIONS FOR THE OUTBACK

How could I receive 6WF? Well, back in the day the ABC had several Shortwave outlets to serve the Outback and desert regions of the Australian interior, and being that more than half of Western Australia is desert, with a lot of isolated mining towns, other small towns and farming and other 'stations' in the interior, SW was the best way to reach those people. 

Queensland also had a Shortwave relay station, VLW4, which I think I heard once. It was used to beam ABC radio to the Outback from Brisbane. The Western Australian shortwave relay came in better here, I think because they beamed their signal more in my direction.

The 6WF shortwave relay was officially called VLW6, and their frequency was in the 31 Meter Band. One night (early a.m., actually), I heard a DJ on 6WF play a bunch of music by the La De Da's (including their cool song 'The Place'), and another night he played almost half an album by the band called Flowers, which changed their name to Icehouse.

The transmitter cable for 50KW AM station 6WF in Perth.

photo from ABC.net.au

The shortwave relay station always identified as '6WF/6WN'. The relationship between the two ABC stations I never clearly understood, but 6WF was the main one.

During the early 2000's when I discovered online radio I 'tuned in' to 6WF a few times, as by then they'd switched off the Shortwave relay.

Of course, today Australia has no Shortwave presence at all, aside from the Reach Out Australia religious station in Kununurra, in the Kimberley district of NW Australia. They broadcast religious programs to ethnic minorities in Southern and SE Asia. I posted a short article on Reach Out Australia and my hearing them a couple years ago, which you can read here.:

https://interrocknation.blogspot.com/2024/05/dxing-reach-beyond-australia-hearing.html

The ABC, thanks to the Australian government, pulled the plug on Radio Australia about 6 or 7 years ago, in a move that not only saddened SWL's all over the world, but maddened rural people in the Australian Outback who depended on Radio Australia for news and information.

It's another case of governments not caring about serving people in rural areas. The US took a similar move with pulling the plug on VOA, which took America's message to rural people in Africa and Asia.

You can read the ABC.net.au article on 6WF here.:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-15/perth-am-to-fm-switch-goes-ahead/106343336

IN OTHER LIFE....

The weather here has taken a turn for the cold again, after a two week respite. The barometer has fallen below 30 inches of mercury, which usually means a low pressure system, which usually means more rain, which usually means higher temperatures in Winter. But that's clearly not the case.

I recently rediscovered my Dad's old barometer -- it's a Stellar brand barometer made in what was then called Western Germany. It seems to be reasonably accurate, despite its age. It's been through a bit over the years. An uncle who was staying with us in the 1980's put it in the trash in a drunken rage, and my former GF shoved it in a box of junk because she didn't know that a) it had been in my family for years, and b) I don't think she really knew what a barometer was.

I'm still not sure if you can forecast the weather by reading the changes in a barometer, but it's still cool to track it.

ON SHORTWAVE, THERE IS NOTHING ON BUT HF STOCK TRADERS

OK, I may be exaggerating here a bit, but not really. High Frequency Stock traders -- a.k.a. 'HFT' stations -- get a lot of criticism from hams and SWL's, but they really aren't taking over the SW spectrum. How can they, especially when the SW spectrum is increasingly nothing but static?

And if you look at the actual number of these HFT stations, there really aren't that many of them. Those stations do put out a pretty solid signal, though, and even when the ionosphere is DOWN, their signals still seem to be UP. At least one of them I've heard recently blasts out a massive signal.

HFT aside, radio here has been a bit dull lately. The Shortwave radio conditions have been absolutely abysmal. Last night I tuned around and there was nothing but static, a couple weak ham radio operators out of Oregon, Nevada and California that I couldn't read through the static, and a digital HFT transmission on 6838 kHz, which was around S3 out of 5, signal-wise. I have no idea where this HFT station is located. Most of the known HFT transmitters are in Illinois, but this signal is too strong for Illinois. I only know it as an HFT (High Frequency Trading) station because signals experts on HFU and elsewhere have said the 6838 Digital hash is HFT. 

One of them said that the HFT Digital signal I'm hearing on 6838 kHz, which slams all my radios with S3-S5 signals (even my little XHDATA D-221 picks that signal up -- just off the whip!), may be located in Ritzville, WA -- a small town in Eastern Washington, about 250 miles east of me, in the middle of desert and wheat country.

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EDIT to ADD: About a week after posting this article, I did some research, and I do not think the Digital hash station I'm hearing on 6838 kHz is in Ritzville, as I've looked at the maps online and the FCC address for the Ritzville experimental station shows nothing but sagebrush, and a few curious looking spots that look like boreholes. No towers, no shadows that would indicate towers -- no powerlines, no access roads, really. 

So I don't know what it is I'm hearing on 6838 kHz. It is, so far, a mystery. It also might not even be HFT.

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This begs the question: if that station is indeed in Ritzville, why is a High Frequency Trading station located in WA state, and slamming the airwaves with a signal that is estimated to be 400 KW PEP? Are they sending trading data to Japan? South Korea? Taiwan?

Who knows.

When the station on 6838 is not transmitting Digital hash, it often just puts out a carrier. There is another carrier, on 6938, that I often hear. I've not yet heard a digital signal on that frequency.

Down below the 40 Meter ham band is a lot of interesting stuff -- pirates, Indonesian chanters, Latin American fishermen, mystery carriers and military signals, Chinese OTHR, and now, apparently, High Frequency Trading stations. Of course, you'll only hear most of this when the ionosphere is UP. When the ionosphere is DOWN, you don't hear anything except the strongest signals.

And most of Shortwave is basically dead right now. And we're supposedly still in a peak solar cycle period. I'm not buying it, of course. I've said before that this Solar cycle sucks, and I think the relatively dead SW conditions back that assertion up.

EUV is down, and eUV is what makes the ionosphere ionized, and according to NASA, the ionosphere is less ionized than it was in 1995 -- eUV ionization has been consequently dropping since then, and who knows when it will come back?

I've got no idea about that.... Solutions to that problem are far above my pay grade. :-)

BACK TO MEDIUM WAVE

Consequently, I'm getting back into my first radio 'love', MW DXing. Now, the ionosphere sucking also affects the AM band, but there still is plenty to hear on the AM band, especially if you have a good radio and a loop antenna. After a night of hearing nothing but static and unreadable signals (and HFT digital hash) on Shortwave, I grabbed my trusty Sangean PR-D4W and tuned the AM band. It was like night and day. 

I didn't hear any super DX, but I listened to KOAC out of Corvallis, Oregon (550 kHz), with a BBC special on the Indian economy, and then heard some music on KSWB, Seaside OR (840 kHz) and some cool classic hits on CKOR Penticton BC (800 kHz). And it was all in high fidelity, as the PR-D4W has the best sound and performance of any MW radio I own.

You don't even really need an external loop with the PR-D4W, but a loop like the AN-200 will add a db or so, which helps with the weaker stations.

DSP SSB Radios -- they work really well

I'm working on an article about 3 DSP/SSB radios I bought last year -- the Tecsun PL-330, XHDATA D808 and Raddy RF760. My PL-330 has gotten heavy use over the past year, but I've noticed that it does overload, especially on the CB band, and when there is strong, pulse-type RFI. 

A 150 ohm resister clipped between the wire antenna and the Tecsun's whip antenna seems to have cured most of that. I'm hoping the issue (bleedover, blocking, AGC over-reacting to changes in signals, unexpected whistles here and there) is just overloading. We'll see.

I'm also working on an article about a music scene that rose and sort of fell -- the Norway pop music scene, which seemed to really put out a lot of great music ni 2014. That article will come along in 3-4 weeks.

I'll close this article with a great track by the NZ/Oz band The La De Da's, who -- when they made this track -- were headed by guitarist Kevin Borich, who then went on to have a lengthy solo career in Australia.

This is the track I heard on 6WF one warm summer night. "The Place".:

And this track by FLOWERS, the band that became ICEHOUSE, was played a few years later on, some time before 6WF's Shortwave relay went off the air. The song is 'Skin".:

This track, one of my favorites by ICEHOUSE, was not played on 6WF, but it's one of Icehouse's better tracks, from 1984, 'Sidewalk". It's got a kickass bass line and guitar chords, and really cool use of the Fairlight Computer.:

Until next time, stay warm, friends (for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere). 

Peace.

C.C., Feb. 19th, 2026.

ADDENDUM, February 25th, 2026:

As I added -- in blue -- in this article, I am not sure the Digital hash station I'm hearing on 6838 kHz is High Frequency Trading, and I'm certain it's NOT in Ritzville, WA, because I looked at the online maps -- both Google and Bing maps -- and see nothing but a flat plot of land with sagebrush at the location where the FCC license address says the Ritzville experimental station is. So I do not know what I'm hearing. But it's digital, and it's noisy, and it runs at various hours during the day, for hours at a time. The typical transmission is around 20-30 seconds of digital hash, with the beginning of it having quick 'pulses', and the ending of it having even quicker 'pulses', and there are one second stops, roughly, between the transmissions.

There are no CW / Morse Code ID's whatsoever -- something that apparently is required by the FCC for HFT stations. So this station may not be HFT at all, because in over an hour of listening to this digital racket on my DX-440 this evening, I have not heard one Morse Code ID.

So where, and what, is this station? Who does it transmit to? Japan? Asia? The Pacific in general, if it happens to be military? Who knows?

The RADIO SHACK 200629 / ATS-505: Fixing an Intermittent Whip-Antenna Connection

A pic of my Radio Shack 200629 radio last year, when I was DXing the 1440 kHz channel. The 200629, an updated Sangean ATS-505, is a good long distance radio for the AM band, especially if you use an external loop.

As I have written here before, I have a Radio Shack 200629 AM-FM-SW-LW portable radio with SSB/CW capability. This radio was first designed in December of 1999, and the design was edited and finalised in 2000. Some time after that, the Sangean company sold the radios as the ATS-505. The radio was produced for over 20 years.

The ATS-505 was intended to be the intermediate range of AM-FM-SW-LW radios, somewhere in between the big models -- ATS-909, and the 909X after that, and the smaller radios like the ATS-404.

Radio Shack, the former American electronics retailer, first issued their badged model of the ATS-505 as their "DX-402". 

A section of the ATS-505 / 200629's RF/IF amplification section. The FM "Front End" chip is circled in blue. Front End chips have RF amplification and some IF amplification and filtering -- basically boosting and filtering the radio signal before it gets sent to the IF chip (upper right center of the diagram), which is the heart of the radio.

Also shown here is the MW/AM antenna (circled in red, bottom center), and the routes the MW signal takes, in pink. The MW/AM in the 200629 is configured like a boombox -- the MW radio signals go from the MW loopstick to the IF chip, from the chip to a mixer IF can & then through the ceramic filter back to the IF chip, where it's processed further before the signal is sent to the Audio amp chip -- and finally, to the headphones and speaker.

By the time the 2010's turned around, the DX-402 went by the wayside, and the "Radio Shack Synthesized World Receiver" was then introduced into Radio Shack's stores. Radio hobbyists instantly recognised it as a Sangean ATS-505, but unlike previous Radio Shack SW radios, this one didn't have a DX-xxx model number.

So it was known by various names. Most of us who have these little marvels call the radio the "200629", because that is the Radio Shack catalog number for the radio.

The 200629 has smoother, chuff-less tuning when you use the tuner knob (it sounds just like analog), and the audio chips are different from the AN7117's the original ATS-505 used. The new audio chips may have a little more power. Aside from that, and the black case (the Sangean ATS-505 is battleship grey), the operation of the 200629 is identical to the previous versions of the 505.

The back of the box my Radio Shack 200629 came in. The front side just has a cellophane window. The 200629 was the last Sangean radio that Radio Shack badged under its own label and sold in its stores. Within 2-3 years after introducing the radio, Radio Shack stores started closing all over the US, ending an era in electronics retail. I got my radio in the Summer of 2013. The store I bought it in closed within six months.

I got my 200629 in 2013. The Radio Shack store (in Wilderness Village, Maple Valley, WA) closed not too long afterwards. At the time, Radio Shack had been going through financial problems -- the electronics marketplace had changed, and brick and mortar electronics stores were going by the wayside. I actually have some fond memories over the purchase. In 2013 life was picking up a bit, and the MW band was loaded with long distance signals. Radio Disney was still on the airwaves, playing pop music, and SW had a lot more stations to hear.

And the pop music of the day was really, really good! 

I still have the box the radio came in.

I have gotten a lot of use out of my 200629 over the years, with very few issues.

I previously wrote a fairly extensive article on the 200629 a few years back. You can find that article here.:

Interrock Nation: MW DXing with the Radio Shack 200629 World Receiver / Sangean ATS-505

In that article I tell you how the radio works, how to get the most out of it, and especially how to DX the Medium Wave band with it, because it's really a sleeper DX radio. The bandwidth is about perfect, really, for an analog IF chipped portable. The tone control works really well, especially for DXing through headphones. The sound is also remarkable through headphones, and it is super easy to DX with this radio while using an external loop.

This is a section of the ATS-505 / 200629's schematic diagram, showing the stereo jack for the Shortwave External Antenna (left center). Below it you can see two diodes, reversed polarity, back to back, going between the 'hot' side of the antenna and the ground. What these diodes do is to conduct static electricity discharges to the ground, keeping them from frying the FET RF amp transistor, circled in orange at top center of the pic. Top left, the arrow shows the line coming from the whip antenna, showing that the connection from the whip is fairly direct.

The signal path from the whip antenna to the first RF amp is shown in pink, and the blue path is from the External SW Antenna jack. The stereo jack switches the whip off when the plug from the External Antenna is inserted into the jack. Inserting a mono plug seems to short circuit the connections somehow, maybe messing with the impedance the radios's RF amp is designed for -- but that is just a guess.

(Pics can be right-clicked and opened in new tab or window to see labels more clearly.)

There are only two weak spots with the 200629, and this may also apply to ATS-505's:

First, if you're listening to the SW ham bands using the BFO, it can overload on really strong signals. The CW or SSB will start to 'chirp'. The solution is to kick in the Attenuator "DX/Local" switch, putting it in local. Or you can just use the whip for reception when the signals are that strong (it's possible that you could wire a small resistor to an alligator clip, and clip it between your wire antenna and the whip antenna, too). It only does this form of overloading on the S5, CW and SSB signals, and there is little, if any overloading on AM broadcast SW or MW. 

Secondly, if you use a mono plug on the end of your wire antenna, sometimes the SW External Antenna jack might cause some occasional feedback of some sort. It seems that the radio's EXT SW ANT jack is stereo, and it requires a stereo plug to work correctly. This issue, overall though, is not debilitating. If you don't have a stereo plug for your wire antenna, you can clip it to the whip and do OK. The circuitry is basically the same. But this issue -- using mono plugs in the stereo EXT SW ANT jack -- may be the same with some ATS-505's or 200629's, especially as the 2000 dated ATS-505 schematic I found online shows a stereo plug for the jack.

I wrote an article on the stereo plug / feedback issue, too. You can find it here.:

Interrock Nation: Radio Shack 200629 Synthesized World Receiver -- how to quickly fix a feedback and whistling noise issue

That said, since 2018 or so, if I listen to SW on my 200629, I just clip my indoor, 25-30 ft. wire to the whip. This is partly out of convenience, and partly because I lost my mono to stereo adaptor plug, and keep forgetting to get another one online.

Clipping the indoor wire antenna to the whip works perfectly for most listening, and from an internal circuitry standpoint, there really is little to no difference -- except I NEVER have gotten the feedback issue by clipping the wire antenna to the whip.

A pic of the Radio Shack 200629 with the back off. At the top, you can see the internal loopstick, which is the antenna for the MW and LW bands. It's 120mm long, and about 8mm thick. Next to it, you can see the solder pad for the antenna terminal. The little prong mechanism -- visible in the other pictures I posted in this article, connects to the whip antenna by friction, and presses against the solder pad, connecting the whip to the radio. That little prong can weaken over time, oxidise, etc. Hence, the surgery required. :-) Some other older Sangeans have similar whip-to-antenna terminal setups -- connection via a little prong mechanism.

Now to the THIRD potential weakness -- and this is something that a lot of older Sangean SW portables seem to have: The whip antenna connection can get wonky. I.e., intermittent. And I'm not talking just the thing getting loose, and needing to be tightened. It acts up, cuts out, goes intermittent, even if you tighten the little set screw. This is after the radio is a few years old.

There's a reason for this. It's fairly well known among Sangean 'classic' SW portable enthusiasts.

Since 1989 Sangean has used a unique way of connecting a whip antenna (and sometimes the battery -- like with the ATS-803A) to their SW portable radios: there is this small, springy prong-like device, a little piece of metal that ends in what can only be called these tiny forks. This springy prong is attached to the whip, and then it touches a solder pad on the main printed circuit board. It's like a little spring-metal connector between whip and the antenna terminal on the PCB.

The springy prong-like thing gets weak over time -- or the prong wears down the solder pad that is on the main PCB. Oxidation on the tips of the prong also probably comes into play. Which means, the connection can go intermittent, because there is less solder for it to press against, and if there is any oxidation on the prong, that will interfere with the connection, too.

A pic of my Radio Shack 200629 with the back off, and the hookup wire I used to make the hard-wired connection between the whip antenna and the PCB's antenna terminal solder pad. The hookup wire is regular telephone 'twisted pair' wire -- very useful for radio projects if you can get it.

I had to hard wire my DX-440 / ATS-803A to overcome this, and I had to do the same thing with my DX-390 / ATS-818. I also hard wired my Realistic DX-370's whip to the PCB, and the DX-370 is a Sangean ATS-800A variant. A pic of this can be seen in a pic of my DX-370 I put in my DX-370 article.

My DX-370 article, with a pic of the wiring, is here.:

Interrock Nation: Medium Wave DXing with the REALISTIC DX-370

I took this pic after soldering the hookup wire to the little prong. After the solder cooled, the wire -- and the solder -- easily slipped off. There was no way to get the solder to stick to the prong. I later tried soldering the hookup wire to the base of the whip itself. That wouldn't take, either. It was then I decided to clamp the end of the hookup wire between the whip and the prong's flat base, basically using the prong's base as a washer. That worked.

Now I've had to do the same operation to my 200629. A few months back, I was tuning the shortwaves and all the signals were weak. Then BOOM! They were instantly loud. Then after a while they cut back to weak again, and then BOOM! they were loud again. It was like someone was flipping a switch. I tested the DX/Local attenuator switch. That wasn't the problem.

The problem was elsewhere. I suspected the connection between the whip antenna and the radio. I tapped on the whip antenna, at the base -- on top of the swivel joint.

BOOM! The signals were back 100%.

That told me one thing: Houston, we've got a problem with the whip antenna connector!

I tightened the whip antenna. That seemed to help. Then it did it again, two days later.

I took the back off the radio and added solder to the antenna solder point on the PCB. That helped for maybe two more days, then it did it again.

It was time to hard wire it and get it over with -- a chore I put off for over a month. I really don't like taking apart my radios unless absolutely necessary. I just get the feeling that there is a limit to the number of times a radio can be dismantled and reassembled before those operations may lead to a failure somewhere in the radio. So I limit it to be on the safe side.

But in this case, I wanted my 200629 to work correctly on SW. So it was a necessary job to do -- time to solder a piece of hookup wire between the whip's base, and the Antenna solder terminal on the PCB.

Here you can see where I clamped the bared end of the hookup wire under the end of the whip, using the prong mechanism's base as a washer, thus making a tight connection.

(If you can't read the type in the pic itself, the pics can be right-clicked and viewed in a new tab or window).

Well, I finally fixed the connection, and this time there was a wrinkle in the process: you can't solder anything to the little prong, because it won't hold solder, and you can't solder a wire to the whip itself, because it won't hold solder either. There was no way I was going to hold the solder gun onto either the whip or the prong long enough to force them to take solder, because it might start melting the plastic case.

The completed fix. The hookup wire is long enough to not mess things up if you have to open up the back of the radio for any reason, but short enough to not keep you from putting the case back together. The wire hard-wires the whip to the Antenna Terminal solder pad. It should last. Every now and then you might still have to tighten the Whip Antenna's set screw, if it works its way loose. The screw is metal, and shouldn't present too much problem. Don't over tighten it, though -- the threads are very fine.

So here is what I finally did: I cut a little piece of hookup wire, and I stuck the bare tip of the hookup wire in between the whip antenna's butt end, and the prong, using the prong as a sort of washer. Then I tightened the little assembly together, basically squishing the bared tip of hookup wire between the whip antenna end and the prong's base.

The little screw that tightens the whip to the body of the radio is metal, as is the whip, so you can tighten it considerably without worrying about stripping it. Of course, I didn't overtighten it -- you're not holding elephants down, you're just securing the whip, hookup wire, and prong together securely. Those tiny threads aren't made for automobile cylinder heads, they're just designed to hold a whip antenna to the radio. So be careful when tightening.

Then I soldered the other end of the hookup wire to the antenna terminal / solder pad on the main PCB.

So far, it's working well that way.

This is a pic of my Realistic DX-370 with the back off. You can see two wiring jobs -- I wired some back-to-back diodes between the antenna terminal solder pad and the negative battery terminal (just off the picture, lower left), to protect the radio from static electricity, and on the right you can see a wire going between the whip antenna and the main antenna terminal solder pad. In this case, the 'prong' device was made of steel, and it was easy to solder the wire to it.

In this pic you can see the DX-370's 120mm MW loopstick, at the top of the radio.

Next morning -- this morning, actually -- I test drove the 200629 on Shortwave, for two full hours or more. I had zero problems. The propagation was a problem -- even though it was 9 a.m., the 20 Meter, 17 Meter, 15 Meter, 12 Meter bands were all dead -- aside from some weak FT8 signals on a couple of the bands -- and the 11 Meter Outband was also dead. Most of the SWBC bands were spare, with the 31 Meter Band fading somewhat rapidly after 9:30 a.m. I did hear some CW on 20 Meters, and some week SSB on a couple channels in the SSB part of the band.

But what I heard was exactly the same on my other radios that I know for a fact work perfectly. So the 200629 was obviously working as it should. And I was able to catch a few SW broadcasts.

I heard China Radio International broadcasting to the Middle East from Kashgar, in Chinese, on 13710 kHz, so I know for a fact that the 200629 is doing its job OK.

And early on, before the 31 Meter Band faded into hiss and static, I heard Radio Free Asia in Korean on 9990 kHz, and Radio Free Asia in Korean with stronger signals on 9910 kHz, an UNIDentified station in non-Cuban Spanish on 9740 kHz; and in the 25 and 21 Meter Bands I heard what sounded like CNR-1 (maybe a jammer) on 11715, what sounded like Viet language on 11715 (Voice Of Vietnam, probably), CNR-1 jamming the Voice of Hope on 13670, and a weak WWCR-3 with a preacher on 13845.

So, the fix worked! My 200629 is back!

This morning, after doing the fix earlier before going to bed, I did some SWLing and the radio worked fine. The fix worked! Here I'm listening to an unidentified broadcast in Spanish on 9740 kHz, at 1703 GMT, April 5th.

DON'T STRESS THE WHIP ON THESE RADIOS -- Just Not A Good Idea

A suggestion: don't swivel the whip on these radios too much, or if you swivel it, lube the swivel, and then whenever you move the whip, do it slowly.

This is because -- to be blunt -- there isn't a lot holding the whip, prong, etc. together. And that fastening screw, even though it's real metal, isn't very big, and the threads are very fine.

In fact, it's probably best not to rotate the whip at all if you're FM DXing. Even with the little fastening screw battened tight, there will be movement of the whip's base inside the radio. I saw this while testing it before putting the radio back together.

Rotate the radio instead. The connection just isn't built for being stressed. Even if you use a little lubricant on the swivel point and the rotation joint at the base of the whip, the whip has such a tight fit that rotating the whip, or swiveling it a lot -- it just is going to weaken the connection over time, and you'll have to tighten it over and over again -- and even though the little screw is made out of metal, I'm not certain just how much re-tightening that little screw is going to take before it starts to strip. As said before, the threads on it are very fine.

So don't overdo it if you use an ATS-505 or 200629.

I have no clue how many 200629's are out there being used. I know that my 200629 article gets about one hit a week or so, so there must be a few of you out there. There was a DX'er in my state who had a DX-402 (the earlier ATS-505 sold by Radio Shack), and his antenna broke. He was an FM DX'er, so possibly he had this particular issue.

Either way, if you have a 200629 or ATS-505, go easy on moving that whip antenna around, maybe lube the swivel so using the swivel doesn't stress the connection to the radio, and if you end up have to do some surgery, it can be done. It's not fun, but it's not really a difficult fix.

This pic I took a few years back for another blog article. You can see the mono-to-stereo adaptor between the Panasonic wire antenna and the radio's EXT Antenna jack. The adaptor, being very small, got lost somewhere. Stereo plugs seem to be a necessity with these radios, as the jack is wired for a stereo plug. The middle terminal apparently switches off the whip. Why? I have no idea. If the whip is collapsed, it won't affect the reception any. It may be an impedance thing. Either way, if you use an external antenna, clip it to the whip, or use a stereo plug with the EXT Antenna jack.

Worse comes to worse, if by chance your ATS-505 or 200629 becomes unrepairable, you could take the whip off entirely, and solder a long bit of hookup wire to the terminal solder pad on the PCB, and then push the wire out through the hole, and clip another piece of stiffer wire to it if needed. But it doesn't have to come to that. I've had my 200629 for 11 years now, and it's doing fine. I am confident that if I reduce moving the whip around a lot, this fix should last. That little bit of hookup wire is squished in between the prong and the whip pretty tightly.

I've said several times that the 200629 is a great MW DX'er. This is despite the fact it's just a glorified boombox, circuitry wise. The IF chip, however, is a high gain one, and if you couple your 200629 with a good loop, and put on the headphones, you'll hear a LOT of DX with this radio.

I just heard WWL New Orleans 870 with it a couple nights back (they're almost a couple thousand miles away), using my homemade Crate loop antenna.

The radio gets the job done. Can't ask for much more than that. And the audio is so good, especially through headphones, that it's not a chore listening to either SW or long distance MW / AM. Good, smooth audio always makes distance listening a lot more fun.

With that, I will close this article. I hope it helped a few DXers out there with ATS-505's and 200629's. Some of this may apply to other, older "classic" era Sangeans, too (1990-2010 era SW portables).

See ya's.

C.C. April 5th, 2024.

ADDENDUM, May 30th, 2024:

As of this a.m. -- well over a month after fixing the radio -- my Radio Shack 200629 is still working well after the fix. I've been using the 200629 nearly every evening or morning to DX the Shortwaves since a day or so after doing the repair, and I've probably put in 15-30 total listening hours on the radio (or more) since the fix, and it's been working perfectly. I simply clip my indoor wire antenna to the whip and it works well, with no intermittents. It's nice when a simple fix can actually work. I'm sure that eventually I might have to tighten the whip antenna's set screw at some point in the future, but the hard wiring / clamped hookup wire fix makes DXing life a lot easier.