"Bryan" ) writes:

If I recall correctly, the receiver section in the HW-7 left much to be
desired (poor sensitivity & selectivity). So, from a functional standpoint,
it'd likely not be worth "unmodifrying". Unless you want to
reverse-engineer and repair what you have, you can look at it as a cabinet
with lots of parts in it. On the other hand, if you want to return it to
stock (for nostalgia purposes), maybe you can buy the manual from Fred! On
the topic of kits, I hear nothing but rave reviews of Elecraft's products.
Their K2 is a hot little rig and, I'd love to have one for myself.


I figured his complaint was that it's a jumble of wires so he's not
sure what's in there.

But yes, given all the articles about modifying that rig at the time, his
modified HW-7 likely is a better reflection of the rig than one that matches
the way it was supposed to be put together.

It dates from a time when direct conversion receivers were seen as the New
Big Thing, but before anyone had really caught on about how to build a good
direct conversion receiver. A single mosfet mixer (I can't remember if there
was an RF preamplifier ahead of it) was pretty lousy in terms of a direct
conversion receiver. Oh, it likely did okay on SSB and CW, but it was lousy
at ignoring the other signals, which is why there were all those mods. There
was at least one article in QST where the receiver (either just the RF stages
or the whole thing) was replaced with a far better receiver board, using a
double balanced mixer.

It was akin to the Heathkit Lunchboxes, that were oh so common and did
their bit to populate six and two metres, but weren't very good for much
beyond local work, so they saw their share of mods too to get around the
basic limitations of the design. The fact that they were cheap, and I
seem to recall the HW-7 was relatively cheap too (certainly compared to
a transceiver with a superhet receiver), likely added to the mods,
because you wouldn't lose that much if you messed it up.

Of course, I am reminded of one receiver construction article in QST in
the late fifties or early sixties where the author started with a commercial
receiver kit, because it provided the chassis and tuning capacitors and
coils at a relatively low cost, and then built his own receiver around it.

Michael VE2BVW