RadioBanter - View Single Post - Your Experiences With SW Tuners in 'Boom Boxes'

Michael Black[_2_] · June 30th 16, 02:35 PM posted to rec.radio.shortwave

On Wed, 29 Jun 2016, wrote:

Between the late 1970s-mid-1980s - the classic box era - 3 out of 5
portable radio-cassette boxes featured at least SW1 and SW2. Some
had fine as well as regular tuning, and the largest sets had external
antenna posts on the back or side, supplementing the one or two
telescopic masts. Panasonic's and Sony's U.S. lineups of those years,
were most likely to have only the 'mainstream' bands: AM and FM,
for whatever reason. Sanyo, JVC, Golden, Rising, and LaSonic had
shortwaves on nearly their entire lineups, from shoe box sized up to
a suitcase!

What, if any, were your experiences with the world bands on some of
those radios? Overall sensitivity, ease of tuning(not too much overshoot
when turning the knob)? Drifting? etc.

What are you expecting to find?

I remember being somewhere and the boombox had shortwave but I don't
remember if I could hear anything on it.

But before boomboxes, there were plenty of portable radios that included
shortwave to some extent. Not just the Transoceanincs (and the choice of
tubes or transistors) but it just went on. SOme were good, but likely all
limited compared to a "desktop" radio. Some were average or bad, not a
surprise since you could get cheap transistor "desktop" shortwave radios
that were at that level too. I think in many cases, it was something
tacked on without adding too much to the cost. They may have been aimed
at certain markets where shortwave was more common (not the hobbyist
market, but certain parts of the world where shortwave is more common).

I've found a few portable radios with shortwave built in in the past
decade at garage sales, and I'd say none are all that great. They may be
better than my 1971 Hallicrafters S-120A (the one with transistors) but
that's not saying much, you couldn't get a worse receiver.

Most portables with shortwave were not that special. Even the Zenith
Transoceanics were relatively simple ciruitry. BUt it was a different
time, lots of people wanting shortwave just to listen to the BBC or
whatever, probably not identifying as "hobbyist".

The one portable that stands out is the Barlow Wadley XCR-30 (I think it
was) the portable out of SOuth Africa that tuned in 500KHz segments, so
the tuning readout was consistent from band to band, and tuning was easy
since it was very spread out. But that wasn't a low end receiver.

The real leap forward was digital tuning, Sony bringing out the 2001 in
the early eighties. That knocked out a lot of problems, but also it
introduced a more common level of double conversion, so a lot less images.
They were costly enough initially to be decent receivers, and as time
progressed that sort of circuitry and specs became the norm at a much
lower cost.

So now you can get a shortwave portable, nice and small, for under a
hundred dollars that is still a pretty good receiver. No fussing over
where you are tuned, no backlash as you tune, they generally are more
selective than the average portable of decades ago. They will beat the
average boombox with shortwave.

Michael