"Lisa Simpson" ) writes:
ok, get off the "more sensitive" thing already everybody. I never said I
thought it would be more sensitive, I simply noted that it is not. The
sensitivity is NOT the issue! The issue is the bandspread tuning, it sucks!
Especially in comparison to my other receivers, and, since I *do* have other
receivers that do not have bandspread tuning, I see no need to fart with one
that does. "Nuff said on that. NOW, is anyone interested in buying a
DX-160?

The issue is hardly the bandspread tuning.

Take a receiver like that and leave off the bandspread tuning and you'll
find that the tuning is the issue. The bandspread tuning is to compensate
for the limitations of the main dial, brought about by the desire to keep
costs down and the limitations of the technology of the time.

Any cheap receiver of that vintage had quite a few limitations, but if you
didn't have money then you had no choice but to buy one of them. That's
why there were so many of those low end receivers. They suffered badly
from lack of image rejection, they covered large portions of the spectrum
on each band, and the dial mechanisms were cheap. Bandspread tuning was
a real cheap way to compensate for the problems of the main dial.

My first receiver was the Hallicrafters S-120A (that's the transistorized
version), and the dial pointer was so wide that it couldn't indicate
frequency, even if the dial had good calibration (which it didn't). On
the higher band, I seem to recall the pointer wasn't much smaller than
the width of a ham band or two. If there was no bandspread dial, then
there was no real chance at being able to tune things in properly.

Synthesized receivers started becoming cheap enough for most a quarter
century ago, or so. So were talking receivers that are at least 25 years
old, and more like thirty to forty years old. Technology actually has
advanced quite a bit since then. You can buy a synthesized shortwave
receiver at Radio Shack for $20 nowadays, and that's because the advances
mean the synthesizer can come in a single IC, and then it becomes cheaper
to use that than an analog tuning scheme. Of course, it's somewhat
illusionary, because synthesized tuning doesn't actually mean the receiver
is any good. Those cheap digital receivers are about the same as those
low end receivers of thirty years ago, albeit with digital tuning.

Michael