Hi All,

I picked up what appears to be an early 1960's Zenith Inter Oceanic
Solid-State model Royal 91 set. Is this a poor mans Trans Oceanic?
What should I expect from it in terms of performance? It appears to be
a no-frills set, not even a pilot light in this beast. It runs on 8 D
cells, almost an anchor. It appears to be OK on AM, but I haven't run
it on SW from fabulous NW N.J yet.

I would imagine that getting the original Zenith 12v power supply is
out of the question, no?

Has anyone had any experience with one of these yet?

rgds,

Mark S.

wrote:
Hi All,

I picked up what appears to be an early 1960's Zenith Inter Oceanic
Solid-State model Royal 91 set. Is this a poor mans Trans Oceanic?
What should I expect from it in terms of performance? It appears to be
a no-frills set, not even a pilot light in this beast. It runs on 8 D
cells, almost an anchor. It appears to be OK on AM, but I haven't run
it on SW from fabulous NW N.J yet.

I would imagine that getting the original Zenith 12v power supply is
out of the question, no?

Has anyone had any experience with one of these yet?

I have two of them. They are to transistor Trans-Oceanics what the L507
"meridian" model was to tube Trans-Oceanics-essentially the same
circuitry but minus the individual spread bands that made the TO one of
the most famous and imitated shortwave radios of its era.

They are good radios-vitually equal to the transocenic in performance
but harder to tune in stations because there are no spread bands.

Two notable issues with them: The band selector can feel cheezy and
sluggish, but nothing could further from the truth. It is hooked to a
quality metal-geared apparatus which often needs adjustment to eliminate
mechanical play.

The tuning knob is brittle and seem to get hammered and broken quite often.

Other than that, the quality of these radios is quite good.

-Scott