On Thu, 5 Apr 2007 14:37:55 UTC, "Roadie" wrote:

On Apr 4, 7:29 pm, (Michael Black) wrote:
"SWL-2010" ) writes:
I havn't had time to sit down and tune it much yet, but so far so good. I
can't detect any drift to amount to anything. The sound is great. The two
tone controls make it rich, or flat, any way you want it. And so far, like
my older S350, the sensitivity is very good. I've used my S350 a great deal,
so I thought I would get the newer verision since the price was right at
only a hundred bucks.

What some people forget is what it was like to have a low end receiver
forty years or so ago.

I bought a Hallicrafter's S120A (as I've mentioned before, it was a solid
state receiver) in the summer of 1971, and paid something like $80, maybe a
bit more, here in Canada. It was about the cheapest new receiver I could
buy, and it was barely within my price range.

It got the really strong signals, and not much else. It overloaded badly,
it seemed to be from FM broadcast stations or maybe TV. The BFO was so
weak that it wasn't useable for receiving SSB. The dial had all kinds of
exotic locations listed on it, but not only was the calibration way off,
but frequency readout was like "it's closer to the .5 than the .0 mark".
It had horrible backlash on the tuning knob. It was awful.

I claim it was the world's worst shortwave receiver, but I suspect it
wasn't that different from many of the low end solid state receivers from
the period, before real advancements had been made in making good solid
state shortwave receivers. We suffered through them because we couldn't
afford anything better.

I imagine a $20 shortwave portable from Radio Shack today couldn't be
worse than that old Hallicrafter's. Plus, you'd get a digital readout,
and likely the tuning knob (if it wasn't tuned by up/down buttons) would
have less backlash than that first receiver of mine.

That doesn't mean that relative to better receivers of today the low
end are perfect, merely that they can't be worse, and may be better
for the simple reason that design has changed.

Michael

I think an old Hallicrafters S120A, Lafayette HA230 or Realistic
DX150b are good examples of radios that were for very good reasons
popular once upon a time. They can be fun to spin the dials on even
today. Ultimately however, I think they serve as a benchmark from
which to measure how far radio technology has advanced.

It would not be difficult to find a digitally tuned portable priced at
$50.00 to $100.00 that will substantially out perform any of those
oldies. But it won't look or feel like a bandspread tuned receiver
either, and it won't give the tactile and aural pleasure of slowly
turning a weighted bandspread knob and listening carefully as stations
gradually come into and out of tune. Eventually, when finding a
specific station or jumping from band to band goes to slowly the game
gets a little old.
My first sw radio was an S-120, my mother got it for me for Christmas
at Sears. It was terrible on accuracy, not very selective, but when
you are 12 years old, hearing world stations was exciting. I think
that I got over 40 countries QSL'd and many states(from OK at the
time). Now, I have two restored boatanchors: An S-38 and its bigger
twin, a Lafayette HE-10, both provide the experience you mention: the
fun of seeing the old dial lamps and turning the big dials looking for
that elusive station.


--
"What do you mean there's no movie?"