On Mar 25, 10:20*pm, wrote:
On Mar 26, 1:15*am, bpnjensen wrote:





An Allied SX-190. *This radio, while not quite the best thing out
there, was pretty darn good for 1970's vintage, and had some nice
features - HAS some nice features - that helped the DX.

Just got me one in really nice shape. *Clean as a whistle, sensitive,
and everything works. *The guy who sold it to me did some of the mods
on it to sweeten the thing up, and it sounds great. *It doesn't have
all the modern bells and whistles, but it has decent selectivity with
its mechanical filters, tunes easily and accurately to within 0.5 kHz
(try that with almost any other consumer-grade analogue RX) and it
sounds clean and clear with its matching speaker.

Overloads a little bit on 31 meters, and maybe on 41 and 49. *Easily
resolved by putting the AF Gain all the way up and using the RF gain
for volume control.

Just listened to VOA Botswana relay on 9885, BBC from Cyprus on 12035
sandwiched between VoRs powerhouses 5 kHz up and down, and a bunch of
other good stuff. *Hams sound like they're in the room with me. This
thing is FUN, and is a real pip :-)

Bruce Jensen

*Does it have optional crystals for full SW coverage?

It only has the stock - including the two ham bands 20m and 80m that
puzzle some folks (why not 13 and 60 for SWL?) but it has the spaces
for two additional, and I think I know some companies out there that
can make custom crystals for the radio. I expect that I will try to
get some for 60m and for 13.5 - 14 MHz. Since each one requires the
addition of an internal cap, these may be it for awhile - or maybe
I'll get fancy and come up with an easy system for plugging crystals
in and out with a variable cap so I can get other bands. We'll see.
I still need to perfect my cornball antenna system.