"Rick" wrote in message
news

Well, I am beginning to have some doubts about the
likelihood of finding
an excellent-quality Hammarlund HQ-180 at a price I can
afford.

Certainly I am going to keep looking, but meanwhile I
guess I need to come
up with a few alternatives that I can "settle" for if, as
seems likely,
the HQ-180's have priced themselves out of my reach.

I need something that is all tubes, and works well on SSB.
I plan to use
it mostly on CW but I need decent SSB performance. AM is
relatively less
important (it should work on AM but doesn't need to be a
spectacular
performer).

It does need to be general coverage 500 KHz to 30 MHz.

R390's and 51J4's would be good (but of course, more
expensive than the
HQ-180) but none comes with a product detector and so
performance on SSB
is likely to be marginal at best, right?

I have looked at a few Hallicrafters SX-100's (that is to
say, looked at
their pictures on eBay... haven't actually seen one up
close in at least
30 years). How does that model and other comparable
models from
Hallicrafters and National stack up?

Did Heathkit ever make a general-coverage communications
receiver that was
worthy of the name "communications receiver"? I know they
had one, I
think the model was AR-3. I had one when I was a kid and
it wasn't much.
Everything else I've seen from them seems to be ham bands
only, and mostly
80-10 (no 160).

Any suggestions, places where I should start looking?

If you really want a lower limit of 500khz you will be
pretty limited. If you mean just the bottom of the broadcast
band (535khz) there are plenty.
You might consider using a receiver with a built-in IF
output and building an external product detector. Product
detectors are not very complicated. It will give you
superior performance for CW as well as SSB. There were a
number of after market adaptors made but the good ones are
very rare. A homebrew does not have to be as complicated as
the commercial versions. There are circuits in old editions
of the _Radio Amateur's Handbook_ and other places. Perhaps
even on the web.
Don't eliminate the SP-600-JX from your list, it has
both IF output and an AVC tap on the back so you can connect
its internal AVC to an external source. A very good external
adaptor was made for these guys but its extremely rare.
There is a lot of literature on the SP-600 on the web, I
suggest educating yourself about the various versions if you
decide to look for one.
You might also check on some of the later National
receivers, they, with Hammarlund and Collins were the
quality brands. Hallicrafters was good at producing
receivers with lots of features at relatively low prices,
most of them IMO, were mediocre.


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Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA





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