Have just fitted a Pioneer DEH-S5250BT car radio to my 4WD. This radio has CD player, Bluetooth, Spotify, USB access amongst other things.
I was delighted to find there are two shortwave bands which gives coverage from 2300kHz to 21975kHz in a number of bands.

So far have listened to Radio New Zealand and Voice of America at excellent strength and clarity. Parked in my driveway and surrounded by buildings and colourbond fences.

Pouring with rain so no more listening for now.

AM broadcast appears to be very sensitive and have heard a number of interstate stations during daytime. FM is very good and the CD player sounds great.

Using a 27MHz whip as an aerial which seems to work well.

Paid $200 at the local Repco.

Amazed that short wave would be available on a car radio these days and also interesting to know that it has good AM reception -- AM sensitivity has been the poor cousin of FM for many years on car radios.

Admit I nearly fell out of my chair with surprise when became aware the radio had shortwave. From internet found a shortwave capable car radio for $450 but bought this one locally from Repco for $200.

Must be a "international" model as there are countries where shortwave stations are the only means of getting news and entertainment.

Looking forward to going to a campsite away from powerlines etc and really see how well this Pioneer performs.

Traditionally car radios always had superior front end performance compared to 'home mantle' radios. They had to be superior due to inherent antenna limits and mobility.

Then something crazy happened when FM came on the scene. It was all about city driving, radio front ends became dumbed down, more work went into looks, display, touch screen,blah blah blah resulting in a final product of near uselessness but a work of beauty lit up in pretty coloured lights.

You are very fortunate to have found a car radio which performs like a car radio, and SW thrown in for good measure. Double bonus!

I have a car radio in the shed thats about 10 years old, it too has shortwave. It was hopeless in the car it was in but goes OK on the bench. I kept it purely for the SW.

Current work ute (Hilux) has a brilliant AM radio in it. I can listen to 2NM Muswellbrook out at Boggabri no problems at all. 2WEB at Bourke is easily heard in Tamworth.

I'll be disappointed if the next vehicle has a poorer performing radio.

A lot of tuners now days are digital (DSP) software based, incorporating a single IC for all the radio processing up to the audio signal out. These IC radios offer superior performance with an unmatched signal to noise ratio and selectivity. They are super cheap and require minimal external components to operate. Embedded within is usually scope for LW, MW, SW and FM recieving. No tuning circuits or IF stages, just digital processing all the way through. Quite an impressive topology when explored.

Simplex, I am at Hill End at the moment. Progress is being made on the bypass for the Bridle Track. Once that is done, access to the many campsites along there will once again be available from Duramana and Hill End. I was quite pissed off when the Bridle Track was reclassified as a 4x4-only road back around 2002 or thereabouts. It came from an election promise from the then Premier, Bob Carr to create 4x4 roads. All the useless idiot did was put big speed humps at each end of perfectly accessible roads for all vehicles and then signposting them as 4x4-only.

I drove alone the track on the southern side of the landslip as far as the road work jusrt to have a look at progress and things are coming along. Not too long ago I was camped with a mate here and we went down to Randwick Holes from Hill End. That stretch of the road is showing its unmaintained status quite well. He has a 4x4 and my kidneys are still trying to recover from how rough the road was.

Anyway, as mentioned, plenty to do in a year or so when the landslip bypass is finally open. I don't think there is much in the way of powerlines for much of the journey. I am not sure how well things would go with reception though as most of the camping areas there are in a deep valley.

Thanks for mentioning the Bridle Track and am looking forward to when it will be reopened. There are some good campsites along the Turon River.

Yesterday afternoon drove to a quiet spot not to far from home and did a bit of a AM and shortwave tune around accompanied by a friend whom is a keen AM DXer.

We are in Bathurst and could hear 2NM Mussellbrook, 2WEB Bourke, 2WG Wagga Wagga, 2RN Wilcannia and a host of other stations. Most were good hearable strength.

Very lively AM receiver.

Later in the evening could hear 4KZ Innasfail which is the retransmit from the local FM station there on 5055kHz. Weak at first then steadily became stronger as the evening progressed.

Aerial a 27 meg CB whip 1.5 metres long.

Best radio purchase I have made for many a long year.

Very interesting to hear that there is available a half decent AM band car radio along with a mind boggling lineup of features.

I have a so called "high end" head unit in our little motor home. Cannot recall the brand as there is nothing on it to say what it is and being a freebie from my son when he closed his shop in Lismore is of no consequence. Closed down when selling car audio there became ridiculous after Harvey Norman came into town and undercut all the locals.

It has been a GOOD performer on AM when we are camped out in the bush somewhere and it also had DVD and CD replay functions.

Those started acting up until it finally it would take a disc and then refuse to eject it so the CD/DVD function was no longer any use to us.

The latest foible is the rotary encoder has decided to become erratic so one cannot adjust the volume so I have been eyeing it up to ditch it.
Another annoying foible is that the display is LCD and its very hard to read in bright light.

So I was delighted to hear of this new unit available from Pioneer and looks to be a good one for a change so I will be heading off to Repco to snare one and swap this other thing out.

If it has good AM reception and can play CD's and the ODD USB stick then at that price it is an absolute bargain.

The radio in my car uses a rotary encoder for the volume and it stopped working a few years back, so it's stuck on one volume setting. I'm pretty sure it's just dry-jointed, but I couldn't figure out how to get the radio out of the dashboard. Otherwise I would have resoldered it ages ago.

The radio itself is quite sensitive, it can pick up the Sydney AM stations in the daytime all the way down to the other side of Lake George (near Canberra), and FM reception is excellent too.

Yes, I noticed your location and thought it prudent to mention the Bridle Track. I've been camping at Hill End and Windeyer for close to 45 years now. I still remember the old BP petrol bowsers at the Windeyer Pub which would not work too well now if they were still there because of the price of petrol now. Back then, those old pumps only clicked up to $9.99 before starting again from nought. Nostalgic memories though. Back in the 1990s it was always a thrill to head back to Sydney from a camp via the Bridle Track. It was the first road into Hill End and all the cash would come up to Hill End from Bathurst and all the gold dust would get carried back on the return trip.

Someone who knows more than I do about penetration of a short wave signal may be able to advise on reception at the camping grounds along the way. Not all are in the gorge but its fair to say most are. Updates on progress with the Bridle Track's diversion are on Paul Toole's website and Facebook page.

With regard to AM reception - provided the antenna is a good one, car radios will always pull in a signal better than most other radios. Whereas the voice quality is generally worse in a solid state radio (the Japs regard AM as inferior and don't bother making an effort with it in their designs) the receiving of the signal is generally better. I have an Airzone console radio (it's dial glass used to feature in this site's title image) which has excellent sounf quality on AM. Not quite there with DAB+ but better than pretty much any AM radio I've ever listened to. The only thing is, I don't know why but I wish other AM radios sounded that good.

Sorry missed this thread for a few days.

On shortwave reception it helps to stay away from being surrounded by dense timber. Trees particulary when wet attenuate signals significantly.

Even in a valley should be able to get shortwave and AM B/C ok dependent on conditions of course. A wire aerial strung out as high as possible will help.

Kakadumh , am sure you will be pleased with this Pioneer. Apart from the radio the CD player sounds great even with the pretty ordinary speakers in my 4WD.

An improved whip aerial will help reception.

My 2016 Isuzu Dmax factory radio had quite good AM reception but lacked a screen and an input for a reversing camera so I replaced it with a Kenwood head which had all the facilities I needed except the AM performance was hopeless.

I tried fitting a signal booster in the antenna feed (bought from Ebay) but still AM was no better.
FM was fine with good sensitivity.

I returned the unit and swapped it for a Sony head which I thought would solve the problem but it's AM performance was just as pitiful.

It seems that AM on current aftermarket auto radio's is not considered very important and is merely included as a sales pitch.

It seems that AM on current aftermarket auto radios is not considered very important

In my experience, that has been the case for quite a few years now.

Well finally bit the bullet and purchased a Pioneer as above as the existing MH radio a Schneider...supposedly GOOD but this one is a lemon as the rotary encoder finally carked it full stop.

The Pioneer was on special at $153 so I bought one and it arrived today and in trying to detach the DIN housing from the unit one of the releasing strips off metal somehow managed to slide in through one of the many slots on the side and then the headache began as to how to get the strip of metal OUT.
Found 4 screws on top which looked like might provide access but they only held the CD mech in place so after detaching the front face and then the shroud that covers the gizzards I could see inside and realised that was not going to work and I could hear the metal strip rattling around and then it stopped..ooops where the hell is it now.

5 screws on the back which partly held the heat sink on and the case end with two screws one each end I had the end open and after carefully unplugging the ribbon cable I had the thing apart but absolutely NO sign of that metal strip.

Removed the CD mech and after looking high and low at it I spied that pesky strip wedged into a gap near the laser read head. Carefully extracted that and reassembled the CD player into the case by the 4 screws I undid initially, slid the ribbon cable back into that connector and put everything back together.
Powered it up and NO sparks from anywhere, turned it on and tuned it up with only about 0.5M of wire for an antenna and incredible sensitivity picking up many local FM stations including KCR our local Community Station.

Then went to AM band and 585 6WA Wagin about 250kms away was loud and clear.
VERY pleased and relieved that I had NOT managed to damage the CD mech which plays beautifully..so ALL GOOD.

BUT for those who have one of these is there any way that one can set the display colours to simply stay on a particular colour which is easy to read as I find the constantly changing colours frustrating when you are trying to tune things in and adjust etc.

As previously noted by others the manual is a tad hard to comprehend and extremely brief and nothing much at all about the changing display.

Anyone found how to fix the display colour??