I have attached a photo of the set that I used during the contest.
Daryll Boyd posted a picture on his site. I humorously called it
"The Bondini". The most interesting feature is that this uses 4 inch
basket weave coils with 9 points- double tuned.

The wire is 2 solid strands of twisted wire. I use a schotty diode
and sp phones with a Bogen matching transformer. I wired it in as
many combinations of coil and cap as time would permit.

Here is Bob's DX set.

Hobby Class Single Tuned Crystal Radio Capable Of DX
My antenna consists of 70 feet of 18 gauge plastic insulated
tinned copper wire oriented in a North East and South West
direction with the lead in pointing North East. The far end
is elevated over 40 feet while the other is only 12 feet high.
A cold water pipe ground connects to the receiver via
15 feet of insulated 14 gauge solid copper wire.

A 250pF ceramic frame air variable capacitor couples the
antenna to the receiver. The tank circuit is composed of
a 365pF phenolic insulated air variable capacitor and a
coil of 60 turns of 21 gauge wire wound on a 2¾ inch PVC form.
It is tapped at 30, 40, and 50 turns from the ground end.

To combat the QRM generated by WXEM, only a mile away, the
wave trap has to be closely coupled to the tank circuit.
The trap is composed of a 250pF phenolic insulated air
variable capacitor in parallel with a 60 turn coil of
26 gauge wire on a one inch diameter form.

Best sensitivity and selectivity is obtained with the
30 turn tap. Usually a single Philmore crystal earphone
and a selected germanium diode were employed. Some
improvement was noticed when using two earphones in
series, probably a better impedance match.

I attribute my success with such basic equipment to mostly
quiet RF environment, many hours spent DXing, and listening
well into the night and the morning on one occasion. Furthermore,
I was fortunate to acquire some high scoring stations. Somehow
I heard two different stations on 630 25 minutes apart. WAVU
was only 203 kilometers away but running a mere 28 Watts! Still,
this does not compare to KEYH on 850. It was 1,211 kilometers away
and transmitting at a power of just 185 Watts! The remaining
acquisitions were locals, 50 KW Clear Channel, or not too distant
5 and 1 KW stations. I received one Canadian and one Cuban
station, both 50 KW. The furthest catch was WBZ, Boston.
A station on 1260 identified itself as Radio Disney but I was
unable to obtain a call sign. Out of three possible candidates,
I am fairly sure it was WWMK. Using a spotter set to ascertain
direction,the station was either from Chicago or Cleveland,
certainly not Boston. 5,000 Watt DX from 800 kilometers away is
certainly not uncommon for me, but anything else would be. Besides,
I did log a few stations running 5,000 Watts from Ohio.

Alex Perez
KG4IHN
Age 15

My crystal radio is a design that has evolved after many years
of searching for a good design. Most of the ideas used in this
radio came from internet sites. No litz wire here. Just old cotton
covered 20 gauge wire wound in a basket weave form. No sound
powered headphones here. Just my trusty old magnetic Trimm Dependables.

Yes, the meter is in the circuit all the time. It is a 50 ua
movement in series with the headphones. It is helpful in maximizing
design of the circuits, selecting the best crystal to use, and in
tuning taps and caps for maximum signal reception. It indicates
carrier strength of the received signal. The carrier contributes
nothing to the audio heard in the headphones. A signal of 1ua is
100% readable. One local station gives a reading of about 500 ua.

My antenna is 18 guage solid magnet wire. It is basically a Windom
antenna that is insulated at the supports which are at the ends and at
the leadin point. It is 180 feet long and runs due east and west. The
wire to the receiver comes off at a point about 60 feet from the west
end and is about 55 feet long. The leadin take off point is up
36 feet with the ends up about 24 feet.

The radio is made in a 20's battery radio wood cabinet. It uses
three Atwater Kent variable capacitors. It uses Atwater Kent
knobs with two sets of antique switch points mounted on a black
plastic front panel. Genuine Atwater Kent copper emblem at the
center top of the front panel. Antique connectors are on the front
panel for antenna and headphone connections. Wiring inside is
all by 16 gauge bussbar. 1N34A diode. The primary and secondary
coils are 4 1/2 inches apart with no electrical connection between
them. I have not found a trap circuit that helps enough to talk about.

2004 XSS DX Contest Information (SW, Open Class)

My 2004 contest log containing 156 SW stations (incl. 5 of
uncertain ID) suggests that conditions in Central Europe are
still more different from those in the USA than on the MW band.
There are a lot of high-power SW/BC stations of 100 to 1000 kW
in the numerous European countries and the neighbour areas, and
particular networks that operate on rather many frequencies
- like R.Free Europe, R. Liberty, VoAmerica
(partly R.Sawa), VoRussia, etc. with their various programs.
It is mostly possible to ID the received stations of these
networks, but often difficult to determine the site (country)
from which the particular tx operates. Only a few real DX
stations are in my log with China/Peking being the most distant
one (9500 km). So, is it really fair to compare my results with
those obtained e.g. in the US if one gets one point,also for
every "nearby" SW station?

I used my 2003 contest set (see Wuggy´s 2003 Contest site)
which I extended for SW reception. This consisted in installing
an air coil of 4 uH (fore in photo) for the 13m and 16m bands, a
pair of Epcos pot cores of SW material K1 with solid-wire coils
of 5.5 uH for 19m to 25m (marked by broken circle), and pot cores
with 45/46 Litz coils of 10 uH for the 31m to 75m bands (full circle).
Except for the air-coil tank I generally employ double tuning.
The principal circuit layout for SW is the same as in the 2003 set
(Ben Tongue approach). With the 5 SW coils there are now in total
13 coils in the set (LW, 3*MW, 3*SW), not counting those provided
for triple tuning on extra boards (Boschodyne Plus).

At SW frequencies the obtainable tank resonance resistances are
much lower than those at MW. Consequently sensitivity is a serious
problem, and more often than on MW one hears two or even three
stations at the same time. For improving the situation I employed
a modified MFJ tuner 901B in front of the set (not shown in photo)
to squeeze the last dB of power out of the antenna and trade it
for selectivity. The tuner can be wired to act as a SPC or SL
preselector, an "ultimate transmatch", or a capacitively-coupled
third tank circuit (for triple tuning). With triple tuning I
measured for example at 41m a loaded (i.e. with A/G and phones
connected) -3dB bandwidth of 23 kHz and a -10dB b.w. of 47 kHz.
-- I use a Schottky diode BAT 62 (as in photo) if high sensitivity
is the prime goal, and 2 or 3 paralleld 5082-2835 if it is selectivity.
The outdoor loop that I described last year in my contest report
served as antenna.

For finding and then logging stations I employed two methods:
(1) First I scanned the band with my spotter radio ATS-404. When
the scan had come to stop at a station, I tuned the xtal set to
the particular frequency with the help of a loosely-coupled
signal generator. After turning off the sig.generator I then
listened if I could hear that station in the SP phones of my set.
(2) When I had the xtal set tuned-up to a particular frequency
within the SW band investigated, I slowly moved the sig.generator
about 50 to 70 kHz around this frequency while watching for
beat notes. When I found a strong beat I tuned the set to zero this
beat, then turned off the sig.generator, and listened whether I
could hear the particular station. This was done repeatedly to
scan various parts of the band. If I had been able to definitely hear
the station in methods (a) or (b) I partly switched-on the spotter radio
again for helping to identify the station received on the xtal set.

During this concentrated listening on SW, I found the rule of thumb
again confirmed that Mike Tuggle formulated in a recent paper:
"If you can hear them on a radio, you can hear them on a crystal set"
- nearly always in my case.

Berthold Bosch

2004 DX CONTEST SET DESCRIPTION

This is basically a Lyonodyne with some differences, such as:

1. The complete set has been built on one chassis and all
controls are at the front panel.

2. The C1-C2 coupling is double: by means of rotation and
changing the distance, and wave-trap is coupled only by rotation.

3. Using one or both sections of the C2 spreads the upper BCB.

4. There is one built-in detector diode with the possibility
to experiment with other types of detectors.

5. Audio transformer is home-made and together with the
impedance-selection switch allows the use of different
impedance headphones, as well as a sensitive speaker.

I am aware of all the imperfections which are subject to
experimental improvements. I want to thank Mike Tuggle who
invited me to join the Contest and gave me many useful advice.
My gratitude also goes to Ben Tongue for helping me to improve my
impedance-matching transformer.

N.B.: The switch s1 is not shown on the photo
(introduced after the photo was taken!).

Five Litz 4.5” O.D. coils are in use at all times. The detector
and antenna coils are controlled by the three 8-1 vernier dials
mounted in plexiglass. The antenna circuit is a modified Tuggle
front end approach with one TRW cap (C1) in series with the
antenna with C1’s stator linked to C2’s stator. C2 is tied to
the antenna coil and earth ground. C3 is tied to the detector tank.
All caps are TRW’s previously available from Fair Radio. This
offers the set more flexibility in tuning than its previous
traditional Tuggle Front end which used a dual ganged cap.
The three inductive traps surrounding the detector tank are
driven by one gang each of three five ganged traps with right
angled 120-1 drives from Fair Radio. Hand capacitance is
controlled by use of empty plastic wire spools, slotted to
accept the dials of the right-angled drives. The stand-alone
TRW cap with vernier dial controls the inline toroid trap.
The three inductive traps are permanently set to trap locals
1400, 1290 and 1230. The inline trap is used trap two local
stations at 630 and 900 when in their vicinities. Otherwise
it is used to assist swatting down 1230. Untrapped, 1400, 1290,
and 1230 will show up all over the band because of their
proximity to my location. The phones are DLR5s matched to the
set via an STM designed by Steve Bringhurst. The set uses
3 paralleled Agilent 5082-2835s and a 3RT 12101 which are
selected via a switch. To the right of the set is my frequency
spotter Radio Shack DX 398. The antenna is an end fed wire,
approximately 140’ long, with a 90’ horizontal run, up 50 feet.
A post-contest improvement by adding three 8’ copper-plated ground
rods to existing water main ground has noticeably improved selectivity,
sensitivity and my ability to control the qrm of locals 1230,
1290 and 1400. The new ground system has also opened up about 150 KHz
previously lost to the above three locals.