Oh yeah, definitely an AM radio nerd. FM too actually. More during the summer months though. Even Sirius/XM is near impossible because of that bluff's trees. And it didn't seem economically feasible to have DSL at $80/month when I was there at most 8 days a month.
I remember when my father passed in 2014, my brother (executor) told me to come over cause before we were going to start getting the estate sale set up, us 3 kids needed to walk through and pick out what we wanted. The first two things I grabbed and rushed to my vehicle before anybody could argue were the Grundig and the Trans-Oceanic.
I had been using my Sony early 2000's receiver for radio reception up there, which was nearly useless for AM - it really only picked up WMT 600 with the stock loop antenna that came with it. One day around 2010, I was throwing away some stuff and found an old clock radio from the 70's with AM only I forgot I had.
Plugged it in, picked up KMOX perfectly clear at night, and WGN pretty good during the day and great at night. An el cheapo 40 year old clock radio half the size of a shoe box, better AM than a $1000 modern receiver. So, my dad's radios were my sweet spot in the estate. Growing up, a typical Saturday up there when we weren't on the river was listening to the Cubs in the afternoon and Cards once the sun went down - on that Trans-Oceanic. That was my childhood at the cabin. So, I knew good reception was possible. The Grundig was icing on the cake - very good AM reception for a digital tuner.
So, in 2017 I thought about the select-a-tenna, but with my experiences with the loops I tried not working well, and the fact the twin coil ferrite has that tunable gizmo to cherry pick like the select-a-tenna as well as long cord connections - the "brick" to me seemed to be a better choice.
I'm curious how well it'd work here in CR. If I can get Rochester NY with a simple stock bar antenna, I'm curious what else I could receive here.
Shoulda brought it home with me when I closed the cabin down