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

analogdial · July 1st 16, 02:05 PM posted to rec.radio.shortwave

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.

I've got a big JVC boombox. 2 SW bands and they're excessively drifty,
typical of radios with plastic dielectric tuning caps. I never used it
enough to become familiar with the finer points of it's performance.

If I recall, it seemed it's sensitivity was OK but it's selectivity was
too broad for good SW performance. Probably well suited for strong
signal AM BCB reception.

The dial tracked poorly with the actual frequency. I touched up the
alignment and band 1 came out reasonably well but the trimmer for band 2
didn't quite have enough capacitance to get the high end spot on.
Although I'm sure it would be an easy fix, I didn't much care. Although
I think I cared more than JVC did.