On Sat, 29 Oct 2011, Cadiscase wrote:

Can someone compare the above receivers or direct me to a site that
does? I am interested in buying one of these and need to make a decision
of which one does what. I did look up the reviews on eham. It was good
but lacked a bit of comparitive info. Thanks

From "73" for March 1963, where there's buying guide that is pages and
pages long, likely quite extensive up to the time of publication.

HQ-145X Four bands (pretty normal for the time), full shortwave coverage
from the bottom of the broadcast band to 30MHz. Double conversion above
10MHz (the SP-600 did the same thing). The X is supposed to denote a
single channel crystal oscillator so you can have one crystal controlled
channel. A crystal filter, which is bound to be a single crystal, with
loading to allow for different bandwidths. A banddspread dial, sounds
like an actual extra variable capacitor (unlike the SP-600 that just
had an extra dial for finer calibration). The description mentions a
notch filter, but that may be the crystal filter too. The HQ-145 came out
in 1958 and variants ran at least until 1963 when this article was
published. Apparently the C model had the clock. So the lettering in the
model, unlike some manufacturers, is used to denote options rather than a
slight modification of an earlier model.

On paper it has about what every general coverage receiver has, the double
conversion above 10MHz definitely would make a difference though.

HQ-170
HQ-180

These sound like identical receivers, with the 170 being Ham band only
(160 through 6meters, triple conversion for the 40meter band and up), the
180 being general coverage (540KHz to 30MHz, triple conversion above
7.8MHz with calibrated bandspread dial for the ham bands. Noteworthy is
that it breaks into six bands which will be an improvement over average SW
receivers of the time). The 170 came out in 1958, the 180 in 1961 and both
still on sale in 63 when the feature was published. It says the 170 has
15 tubes, plus rectifier and regulator, the 180 has 16 plus the rectifier
and regulator. IFs for both is 3035MHz, 455KHz and 60KHz. Both seem to
have some sort of filter at 455KHz, and then better (and variable
bandwidth) filter at 60KHz.

It's hard from the description to see how much of a difference there is
between these two due to one being ham band and the other general
coverage, and how much due to the general coverage coming after the ham
band one and maybe getting some improvements. Both have product
detectors, and it sounds like selectable sideband.

Clearly these last two are better than the first. The 170 and 180 clearly
are much fancier design than the average shortwave or ham receiver of the
era, especially when a lot of them didn't deal with SSB (so you had to
turn down the RF gain, turn up the audio gain and sometimes fuss about).

Unless there's a big price difference, better to get the 170 or 180.
Which one depends on what you want to do with it. A general coverage
receiver can always be useful, and since the ham band one doesn't have
the WARC bands (that came well after the receivers came out) the general
coverage does get them. Back then, it made sense to get the ham band
only, so you'd have a lot better dial for the ham bands, but nowadays most
hams have transceivers already, so a general coverage receiver supplements
that, rather than because it's cheap or dual purpose and then ending up
being a bad choice as a ham receiver. If the 180 is as good for SSB as
the 170 (which seems implied by these listings), the 180 is probably the
better choice at this point, so long as the two are in equal shape.

The 170 does have the six meter band, which might be handy. When I had an
SP-600, that did go up to 54MHz, I found it was good enough at the time
for SSB at 6meters, though I had nothing to compare it to back then. It
seemed stable enough, and because of the double conversion (a similar
first IF frequency) image rejection was good; of course, that may not
translate to Hammarlunds less expensive receivers.

Michael VE2BVW