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Reviews For: MFJ-306

Category: Receivers: General Coverage

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Review Summary For : MFJ-306
Reviews: 3MSRP: 90
Description:
World band SWL converter for car radio
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.mfjenterprises.com/products.php?prodid=MFJ-306
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0032
N7FSM Rating: 2015-02-09
Not the greatest Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Knowing MFJ, I saved myself a lot of heartache by checking for cold solder joints and bad connections first. Seeing none, I crimped and soldered some power poles, attached a resonant 160 meter antenna and home stereo. There was nothing. No signal to be had anywhere. So I pulled apart a connector and it disintegrated in my hand and a ball of solder fell out. Not only that, of the 2 conductors and the shield in the cable, the wrong one was soldered to the board. (Solder ball on white wire, black wire to the board) After replacing the short/defective cables with some 4 footers, it works with the aforementioned 160 meter dipole and home stereo. It's lo fidelity is not because the antenna is too big. I know what intermodal sounds like. It's not that. It just sounds like crap. In any case, knowing that it now works, I installed it in my car, installation was easy, but the only thing I can hear is Radio China broadcasting from about 80 miles away. Don't waste your money. I think I would've been better off if I Googled "in dash shortwave" and looked in the Australian of middle eastern regions first.
W0JOG Rating: 2003-04-14
Worth the money Time Owned: more than 12 months.
You're not buying a full SW reciever, you are getting a converter that will allow you to hear SW through your auto/truck/van's BC radio which may or may not be much to start with.

I've owned the little converter for several years. It is hooked to an after-market AM-FM reciever in my pickup truck. It brings me SW on demand which is most welcome in this rural area where there are no AM stations of power or programs to listen too and FM is satellite music.

All the 306s bands work for me with the regular vehicle 30-some inch antenna. As with other SW radios, propagation has much to do with what you hear. Try the lower bands at night.

And remember that most of the "big guns" in SW broadcasting have abandoned beaming us their signals in favor of streaming on the Internet which is rather hard to hear on the go.

N2SQV Rating: 2003-04-14
RE: It's a MFJ Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Correction regarding the "clarify" knob. It IS wired correctly.

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Earlier 2-star review posted by N2SQV on 2003-04-10

Like the small size and very easy to install (at least in my car). When I can get it to work, it sounds great through the car speakers which is what it was designed to do. Not the most stable, listening to the BBC on 15190 KHz, have to re-tune every couple of minutes (30 KHz over 20 minutes). Probably a temperature issue. Also 15190 KHz according to the provided conversion chart should be between 910 and 920 KHz, I hear it anywhere from 1100 to 1120 KHz. 19M is the only band I can get to work (25M, 31M and 49M have not heard anything but noise). I might be able to hear some signals on the other bands now that I have added 54" of horizontal wire to the 32" AM/FM whip. It has definitely improved reception on 19M. The "clarify" knob is wired backwards, turn it anti-clockwise frequency goes up and vice/versa. There is no change to the AM/FM reception when the unit is switched off.