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Knight StarRoamer Working Great!
Just got this radio, all restored, recapped, etc. Four tubes and a
selenium rectifier. Great sensitivity on the BCB, pulling in tons of East Coast/Mid-Atlantic Stations from here in South Florida. Never knew a cheapie could be so fun! Of course, my first radio was a Hallicrafter's S-120, a real dog, not even as good as this Knight radio. About the same as my S-38C in performance. Retro-listening is where it's at. |
Knight StarRoamer Working Great!
The Star Roamer is the same basic configuration as the S-38 series and the
S-120. There is no good reason why the Star Roamer should be significantly better than either. For minimalists, I like the regenerative sets. Super-gainers (super-het with regenerative if stage) can be quite good, altough there are not many examples - and a few that were sold were cheaply made. Simple rigs can be fun to use. One note - using a simple receiver with one tuned stage, a long antenna can allow the receiver to overload badly, especially by broadcast stations. In that case, a short Hi-Q antenna (a loopstic), can significantly improve reception. Congratulations on restoring the receiver. 73, Colin |
Knight StarRoamer Working Great!
On Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:48:13 -0800, Richard Knoppow wrote:
"sctvguy1" wrote in message ... Just got this radio, all restored, recapped, etc. Four tubes and a selenium rectifier. Great sensitivity on the BCB, pulling in tons of East Coast/Mid-Atlantic Stations from here in South Florida. Never knew a cheapie could be so fun! Of course, my first radio was a Hallicrafter's S-120, a real dog, not even as good as this Knight radio. About the same as my S-38C in performance. Retro-listening is where it's at. What sort of antenna did you use on the Hallicrafters receivers. The Star Roamer has a built in loop and may well have done better than a short wire antenna on the others. When I got the S-120, I made my mother mad by climbing on her shake- shingle roof and installing a long wire, from one peak to the next, about 50 feet, and about 15 feet up. This was in the mid 60s when I was in high school. You are right, the Knight has the built in loop on the cardboard back, and I use a Select-Tenna to help it out. The S-120 could barely pull in the "big" players back in the day, BBC, Radio China, Radio Moscow, DW, etc. On BCB, an old 5 tube AM table radio could beat it out! My long wire, then, ran NW/SE. My wire now, that I have connected to the Knight and my other boatanchors, is about 20 feet and runs NE/SW, I am only one mile from the Atlantic here in South Florida. |
Knight StarRoamer Working Great!
On Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:34:37 -0800, COLIN LAMB wrote:
The Star Roamer is the same basic configuration as the S-38 series and the S-120. There is no good reason why the Star Roamer should be significantly better than either. For minimalists, I like the regenerative sets. Super-gainers (super-het with regenerative if stage) can be quite good, altough there are not many examples - and a few that were sold were cheaply made. Simple rigs can be fun to use. One note - using a simple receiver with one tuned stage, a long antenna can allow the receiver to overload badly, especially by broadcast stations. In that case, a short Hi-Q antenna (a loopstic), can significantly improve reception. Congratulations on restoring the receiver. 73, Colin For some reason the old S-38 and the Knight are more sensitive than the S-120 was. I have never heard any good things from people who had the S-120, most said it was deaf as a post! My mother got it from Sears on layaway(does that date me?). I think it was $69.95, or some such. What did I know then? I do know that it was very inaccurate, not very sensitive nor selective, and basically a dog. My dad in the AF later got me a surplus R-390 from a comm squadron that was scrapping them, and then I found out what SW/BCB was really like! Unfortunately, it was an aircraft model, that required a 28 volt power supply to go along with the radio. When I turned it on, the lights in the house dimmed! |
Knight StarRoamer Working Great!
sctvguy1 wrote:
On Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:34:37 -0800, COLIN LAMB wrote: The Star Roamer is the same basic configuration as the S-38 series and the S-120. There is no good reason why the Star Roamer should be significantly better than either. For minimalists, I like the regenerative sets. Super-gainers (super-het with regenerative if stage) can be quite good, altough there are not many examples - and a few that were sold were cheaply made. Simple rigs can be fun to use. One note - using a simple receiver with one tuned stage, a long antenna can allow the receiver to overload badly, especially by broadcast stations. In that case, a short Hi-Q antenna (a loopstic), can significantly improve reception. Congratulations on restoring the receiver. 73, Colin For some reason the old S-38 and the Knight are more sensitive than the S-120 was. I have never heard any good things from people who had the S-120, most said it was deaf as a post! My mother got it from Sears on layaway(does that date me?). I think it was $69.95, or some such. What did I know then? I do know that it was very inaccurate, not very sensitive nor selective, and basically a dog. My dad in the AF later got me a surplus R-390 from a comm squadron that was scrapping them, and then I found out what SW/BCB was really like! Unfortunately, it was an aircraft model, that required a 28 volt power supply to go along with the radio. When I turned it on, the lights in the house dimmed! I had a Heath GR-54, which was a bit better design than the Star Roamer. It worked ok on the lower bands, but on the highest frequency band it didn't get much besides TV birdies. I almost bought an SP600 when a surplus store on Canal Street in lower Manhattan got a truck load of them in and was selling them cheap. The major reason I didn't buy one was that it was too heavy to carry home on the subway. (Now if I had thought ahead and brought a hand truck with me.... assuming I would have been allowed to bring one on the subway). Then again I wonder how hard those things are to restore. |
Knight StarRoamer Working Great!
sctvguy1 wrote:
When I got the S-120, I made my mother mad by climbing on her shake- shingle roof and installing a long wire, from one peak to the next, about 50 feet, and about 15 feet up. This was in the mid 60s when I was in high school. You are right, the Knight has the built in loop on the cardboard back, and I use a Select-Tenna to help it out. The S-120 could barely pull in the "big" players back in the day, BBC, Radio China, Radio Moscow, DW, etc. On BCB, an old 5 tube AM table radio could beat it out! My long wire, then, ran NW/SE. My wire now, that I have connected to the Knight and my other boatanchors, is about 20 feet and runs NE/SW, I am only one mile from the Atlantic here in South Florida. My Collins is working great too. It's the ionosphere that's broken. What's UP with that? --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
Knight StarRoamer Working Great!
sctvguy1 wrote:
My dad in the AF later got me a surplus R-390 from a comm squadron that was scrapping them, and then I found out what SW/BCB was really like! Unfortunately, it was an aircraft model, that required a 28 volt power supply to go along with the radio. When I turned it on, the lights in the house dimmed! That sounds like an R-392, which is a great radio but different than the R-390. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
Knight StarRoamer Working Great!
On Sat, 5 Dec 2009, sctvguy1 wrote:
On Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:48:13 -0800, Richard Knoppow wrote: "sctvguy1" wrote in message ... Just got this radio, all restored, recapped, etc. Four tubes and a selenium rectifier. Great sensitivity on the BCB, pulling in tons of East Coast/Mid-Atlantic Stations from here in South Florida. Never knew a cheapie could be so fun! Of course, my first radio was a Hallicrafter's S-120, a real dog, not even as good as this Knight radio. About the same as my S-38C in performance. Retro-listening is where it's at. What sort of antenna did you use on the Hallicrafters receivers. The Star Roamer has a built in loop and may well have done better than a short wire antenna on the others. When I got the S-120, I made my mother mad by climbing on her shake- shingle roof and installing a long wire, from one peak to the next, about 50 feet, and about 15 feet up. This was in the mid 60s when I was in high school. You are right, the Knight has the built in loop on the cardboard back, and I use a Select-Tenna to help it out. The S-120 could barely pull in the "big" players back in the day, BBC, Radio China, Radio Moscow, DW, etc. On BCB, an old 5 tube AM table radio could beat it out! My long wire, then, ran NW/SE. My wire now, that I have connected to the Knight and my other boatanchors, is about 20 feet and runs NE/SW, I am only one mile from the Atlantic here in South Florida. I got a Hallicrafters S-120A, which was transistorized, in the summer of 1971 when I was 11. How horrible that radio was. But the next year, when I got the use of an SP-600, my first thought was "boy is that noisy". I was too young to realize that it wasn't that the S-120A was "quiet", but that it was pretty much lacking in gain, and that's why there was no real noise coming out of the receiver. I paid $80 or $90 Canadian for it then, the cheapest new receiver I could get, and really pretty useless (as I've said before, it had all the disadvantages of the low end tube receivers, plus all the faults of a badly designed solid state receiver). I got a Grundig G4000 (a Yachtboy 400 under a different model number) for a hundred dollars in October, and got a free windup radio as a bonus. An actual frequency readout that means something, double conversion, a decent BFO (I can actually receive SSB signals with it, I couldn't on the S-120A unless I drastically attenuated the incoming signals), surely better selectivity, and so much more sensitivity. No tuning knob, though. Michael VE2BVW |
Knight StarRoamer Working Great!
"Kenneth Scharf" wrote in message ... sctvguy1 wrote: On Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:34:37 -0800, COLIN LAMB wrote: The Star Roamer is the same basic configuration as the S-38 series and the S-120. There is no good reason why the Star Roamer should be significantly better than either. For minimalists, I like the regenerative sets. Super-gainers (super-het with regenerative if stage) can be quite good, altough there are not many examples - and a few that were sold were cheaply made. Simple rigs can be fun to use. One note - using a simple receiver with one tuned stage, a long antenna can allow the receiver to overload badly, especially by broadcast stations. In that case, a short Hi-Q antenna (a loopstic), can significantly improve reception. Congratulations on restoring the receiver. 73, Colin For some reason the old S-38 and the Knight are more sensitive than the S-120 was. I have never heard any good things from people who had the S-120, most said it was deaf as a post! My mother got it from Sears on layaway(does that date me?). I think it was $69.95, or some such. What did I know then? I do know that it was very inaccurate, not very sensitive nor selective, and basically a dog. My dad in the AF later got me a surplus R-390 from a comm squadron that was scrapping them, and then I found out what SW/BCB was really like! Unfortunately, it was an aircraft model, that required a 28 volt power supply to go along with the radio. When I turned it on, the lights in the house dimmed! I had a Heath GR-54, which was a bit better design than the Star Roamer. It worked ok on the lower bands, but on the highest frequency band it didn't get much besides TV birdies. I almost bought an SP600 when a surplus store on Canal Street in lower Manhattan got a truck load of them in and was selling them cheap. The major reason I didn't buy one was that it was too heavy to carry home on the subway. (Now if I had thought ahead and brought a hand truck with me.... assuming I would have been allowed to bring one on the subway). Then again I wonder how hard those things are to restore. SP-600s are, in general. not too hard to work on and use mostly standard parts. There are some difficult areas, for instance if you have to take the tuning unit apart but this is mostly not necessary. There are a lot of parts because something like twenty five thousand of them were built. They worked very well when new and can be brought back to this performance. I have come to the conclusion that there are a lot of SP-600ds which work but are really sick. I read complaints of poor RF tracking, poor dial calibration, etc, all signs of misalignment or tampering such as plate bending on the tuning capacitor. -- Richard Knoppow Los Angeles WB6KBL |
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