On Thursday, September 17, 2015 at 9:29:34 AM UTC-4, junius wrote:
I still check the traffic here from time to time, but sadly it's mostly useless drivel. SWBC bands are not as teeming with activity as they used to be. As for the overall decline of rec.radio.shortwave, it was compounded by the high volume of non-radio traffic and the emergence of more focused, often moderated, alternatives like Yahoo groups. The latter migration was rather unfortunate in that it Balkanized the hobbyist chatter among many groups of specific interest areas. Oh well...

Speaking for myself, I'm still doing swling, with some UTE and ham band monitoring, using my Drakes and other receivers, among which is a '7030+, which I bought new in its final production year. Steve, it was in part due to the glowing comments by you and Joe Analssandrini that I finally bought that one! There are any number of good folks who silently disappeared from rec.radio.shortwave: Joe A., Telamon, Eric F. Richards, just to name a few. Hope they're doing well, and still enjoying the hobby in some way or another..

Sorry to hear that your MW antenna arrangement has fallen into disrepair, Ron. On any number of occasions when engaging my ANC-4, I thought of your antenna project out there in the Midwest...wishing that I had the space to execute antenna projects on such a scale!

I have the AOR 7030 (not the plus) version. The controls are getting hard to turn, believe this was a common problem in the original production run (for a few years). Hard to beat its performance - anything else pales in comparison with just a few exceptions: R-390 (non A),Harris RF-550,Racal R-2174(P),Drake R-7,Palstar R30CC ...