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In over 30 years turning radio into a hobby I have discovered a couple of things. One of them is the fact that your amount of enjoyment and success is directly proportional to the quality of the radio.

And it is not about spending mega-bucks!
Read that line again and again because it is very important. The technology has come so far in 40 years that what we only dreamed of in the mid seventies, is now available for about $100!

The Grundig G3 Traveler (photo at right) usually sells for around $149 - and in the following pages we will work in the creature features of the G3 (by doing a review) and integrating how it functions (much as other similar radios work) and use this as a basic guide to all-band radio listening.

Over here in our photo gallery, we have a growing collection of G3 Grundig photos I have taken with my Canon EOS-30D and assorted lighting gadgets.

I received a sample Grundig G3 Traveler from Durham Radio Canada for evaluation (and I apologize in advance for what feels like months and months promising a review...) - And I will first admit that it was a hotly anticipated radio. And one of the main reasons was in some of the creature features. But seeing that this is a review from the basics up, I am going to explain everything in somnolence inducing detail.

As mentioned earlier, the Grundig G3 Traveler is an "all-band" radio. All band generally means Long wave, AM, SW and FM. As a bonus, the Grundig G3 Traveler throws in the aircraft band. The aircraft band is a range of radio frequencies that aircraft use to communicate with - from plane to plane and plane to tower. So, yes - you can actually hear commercial (and some military) aircraft chatting with the airport and with each other... in real time and often at distances of up to 300 miles away.

"Back up Colin! What is the Long wave band?"

The long wave band is a range of radio frequencies below the AM radio dial (530khz to 1700khz) and is used for aviation navigation world-wide and commercial radio broadcasting in Europe and Asia. Long wave (LW) has an advantage in that it is not as susceptible to quick variations in atmospheric (ionospheric) conditions - reception tends to be more stable over longer distances and is very reliable at night time. If you are a coastal resident (particularly on the East Coast of North America) it is quite possible to hear foreign language stations from England, France and continental Europe on the LW band during the Fall, Winter and early Spring periods. And yes, you can do it with the Grundig G3 Traveler radio above "as is" - that means without any help from an external antenna. Much more on antennas later.

Media Byte - Here is a MP3 sample of Russia as heard on the west coast of North America on Vancouver Island - Yes, it is in Russian. It was received on 279khz in the heart of the Long wave band and it's indicative of what you can hear on either coast in the Americas.

The Grundig G3 Traveler  comes with AM (530khz to 1710khz) as mentioned previously - the good old AM radio dial that many of us grew up with. It is still a very popular medium in North America (and the rest of the World) and you would be hard pressed to find a spot anywhere on the planet (other than Antarctica perhaps) that does not have a dial full of signals at night. Daytime, as we mentioned before, is a different matter. Because of the size of North America and the vast expanses of wide open wide open, you can find yourself in spots where there is no AM or FM reception. That said, unless there are some "conditions" contributing to a radio black-out (more on that subject later), there should be lots to pick from on the SW bands any time of the night or day.

Back to the Grundig G3 Traveler. It has good sensitivity on the AM dial from the internal ferrite antenna. A ferrite antenna is internal to the radio - has the ability to pick up distant stations and is "directional" - and that means you can swing the radio around and actually null out stations from one direction while receiving or enhancing stations from another direction. What fun!

The Grundig G3 Traveler  also features something called "Selectable Sideband Synchronous Detection" - that is a mouthful but in short, here is the Cole's notes of what an standard AM radio signal is:

Radio fact - An AM signal features a "carrier" wave and "modulation" or "intelligence" (like music or talking) - Interestingly, there are 2 identical but opposite "sidebands" that carry the same intelligence. Fact is, we can live without the "carrier" and only need one of the sidebands being transmitted to make any sense of the transmitted signal. Which is good news and here is why:

As a radio signal makes its way to you, often via "multiple path reception" or ionospheric reflection, it can encounter variations in its path to you that cause the "carrier" wave to phase out resulting in audio distortion. Now what if you could synthesize a duplicate carrier wave inside the receiver that does not vary with signal conditions? You would have a better signal with a resultant improvement in audio quality. And that is sort of how selectable sync detection works. It picks one sideband (because you only need one for intelligence) and it "phase locks" to the signal eliminating some of the distortion associated with shortwave radio reception.

Ham radio operators use a mode of transmission called "Single Sideband" - per the explanation above, at the ham transmitter processes the signal in such a way as to not transmit the carrier and one sideband at all - because as we have stated earlier: The carrier is only a reference point. We can add that in the receiver. By concentrating all the power of the transmitter into the one sideband one improves efficiency and, in a sense, increases range and intelligibility. Win win!

The Grundig G3 Traveler handles "Single Sideband" (or SSB) reception quite handily. In fact, you can select Upper or Lower sideband depending on the band or range of frequencies you are on. Keep in mind that Ham's use different modes for different frequency bands. For the uninitiated, SSB sounds like a duck quacking if it is mis-tuned. The sound of SSB reception was used in the original Star Wars movie (episode 4) in the "comms" between X-Wing fighters - little movie/radio trivia there folks!

 While on the subject of Amateur Radio, let's talk about the G3's sensitivity. In urban areas or zones that have lots of local AM and FM stations, it is best to set the SENSITIVITY switch on the left hand side of the radio to "LOCAL" - this drops the G3's sensitivity to a lower level. The other setting is "DX" which is useful if you are out in the woods or rural areas. Trust me on this, it makes a difference. The G3 has such a "hot" front end (the RF amplifier stage) that it can be overwhelmed by strong local FM or AM signals - resulting in distortion or, ironically, loss of sensitivity and selectivity.

Definition time: Sensitivity and Selectivity

• Sensitivity - the ability of a radio to pick up extremely weak radio signals and recover audio. Often measured in micro volts = 1 millionth of a volt. A shortwave signal arriving on your shore or backyard might be 4 micro volts after traveling 7000 miles!
• Selectivity - the ability to reject a station on a channel close to the desired one and yield listenable audio. Because shortwave stations are often separated by as little as 5 Khz (as opposed to 10khz in AM radio), the receiver must be well designed... and be selective. More on this later.

 The Grundig G3 actually has a switch for "selectivity" as well - It is the Narrow-Wide switch. It switches between two "filters" in the receiver that controls how much "information" reaches the final stages of the receiver circuitry. Simply, when you are tuning in "KGO" on 810khz in San Francisco - you receiver is picking up more than that one frequency. In the case of a radio with "broad" or wide selectivity, it might process everything between 805 and 815 khz. And what happens if there is a strong station on 820khz? You have some of that in the speaker or earphones. Having good "selectivity" helps you have a better listening experience - and it helps you hear more interesting stuff on  your radio. More on that in the Chapter 5.