Qodosen SR-286 1100 mi from the kitchen! 

Thanks 😀 The radio is small and light enough that it worked!

Excellent. Glad you liked it. Thanks!

I often hear more than one station on a channel, but it is so gratifying to be able to differentiate them so clearly and easily. It's a nice feature of loops (and transmitters perpendicular to me).

Yes, it couples with the radio's internal antenna rather well. Thanks. You too.

Home brew is perhaps some of the most fun part of SWL.

Nice! I hope it cracks open the air waves (both ground and sky waves ;) ) to all manner of stations and transmissions for you.

Sometimes the simplest solutions are best.

Thanks for checking out my channel. Good luck on the SWL contest. Thanks for putting it on.

It has been a great little radio.

The little loop really helped with signal strength. I was pinning the meter, getting 99 dBu, with "local" AM stations on daytime power from Camrose (76 km) and Calgary (200 km). I don't know whether to be gobsmacked or dubious.

Good idea with the rubber band. Waiting for my 18650 to arrive. What 18650 battery brand are you using?

It was funny. I was thinking of fancy 3D printing options... and then the mock up elastic band just solved the problem. And the SR-286 is light and small enough to get away with it. As for the battery: just a no name. But it is wrapped exactly like my XHDATA battery -- so I wonder. It was pretty much moot anyways, as I had little to no other button top battery options even on the Jungle Web. I didn't want any of those USB-charged version of the 18650s. Some say the larger city centres have options, which I would suspect is true, but don't know. Where did you order yours?

What can I say? Thanks for watching and commenting. I agree that the best we have to offer is not well represented on MW. But if I was going to think about, then that is true in far too many things... I try not to get started 😖 I enjoy the technical aspects and recall the days well MW opened up new and interesting worlds.

Yes, I have used the mono 3.5 mm interconnect. I found the proximal coupling more effective. I'll look again and see if there is something there. I have found the long wire so much better.

The infrastructure dependency is significantly greater for cell phones. "the typical coverage radius of a cell tower is only 1 to 3 miles (1.6 to 5 kilometers) and in dense urban environments, a cell phone tower usually reaches 0.25 miles to 1 mile (0.4 to 1.6 kilometers) " (Source: dgtlinfra.com/cell-tower-range-how-far-reach/) Last night on my PL-880 I picked up: KXEL 1540 Waterloo Indiana (2460km); KMOX 1120 St Louis (2355 km); and KRLD 1080 Dallas (2557 km).

@@RSears I'm in northern California and been picking up RNZ in New Zealand on shortwave loud and clear and pretty much nothing else. I think my long wire is too long.

Antennas are black magic. Well, not really, but the success of even the greatest radio depends on them. And there is a whack of atmospheric conditions in play. On MW I got the above-mentioned stations with just a Tecsun AN-200 loop coupled with the ferrite antennas in the Qodosen SR-286 and my Tecson PL-880. They both were essentially the same. That was interesting. MW is different than SW, but being somewhat new to this, I haven't been able to get outside to compare different antennas. The SR-286 can bypass the internal ferrite antenna and use the ext antenna jack, which is amplified. I'm hoping it will provide a good means of contrast to compare antennas. My XHDATA AN-80 is just a 7 m reel wire. I've got NZ by hooking it up a tree, but didn't have my 7 m fishing pole to compare whether a vertical position of the same antenna would help with sky wave reception. With reception verticality doesn't always matter. A Loop-On-The-Ground apparently works too. I'm waiting for warmer weather to get outside to compare these antennas. I feel your pain 🙁 but trial and error is /will be my approach. A roll of decent silicone-wrapped wire is cheap. Get a two-pin 3.5 mm pig tail connector and cut and splice your way to success 😁