Can someone compare the above receivers or direct me to a site that does?
I am interested in buying one of these and need to make a decision of which one does what.
I did look up the reviews on eham. It was good but lacked a bit of comparitive info.
Thanks

The 170 is amateur bands only.
The 145 and 180 are both general coverage; the 145 is double-conversion, the 180 is triple conversion.
The "X" indicates that it has crystal sockets for fixed monitoring.
The "A" means that it has a solid-state rectifier.

If you can get a good price, go for the HQ180A definitely.

On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 09:50:00 -0700 (PDT), Cadiscase
wrote:

Can someone compare the above receivers or direct me to a site that does?
I am interested in buying one of these and need to make a decision of which one does what.
I did look up the reviews on eham. It was good but lacked a bit of comparitive info.
Thanks
A major difference is that the 170 and 180 have a third IF at 60 KHz.
This IF is tuned to 455 KHz, the second IF with a VFO. It has single
sideband with various bandwidths from .5Khz to 3 Khz. If I recall
it has a product detector.

The 170 is Ham Bands only, but it is prior to WARC.
The 180 is General Coverage.

The 145 is General Coverage. I remember its being a dual conversion
receiver with a crystal filter.

73,
Ed, N5EI

Edward Feustel wrote:
On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 09:50:00 -0700 (PDT), Cadiscase
wrote:

Can someone compare the above receivers or direct me to a site that does?
I am interested in buying one of these and need to make a decision of which one does what.
I did look up the reviews on eham. It was good but lacked a bit of comparitive info.
Thanks
A major difference is that the 170 and 180 have a third IF at 60 KHz.
This IF is tuned to 455 KHz, the second IF with a VFO. It has single
sideband with various bandwidths from .5Khz to 3 Khz. If I recall
it has a product detector.

The 170 is Ham Bands only, but it is prior to WARC.
The 180 is General Coverage.

The 145 is General Coverage. I remember its being a dual conversion
receiver with a crystal filter.

73,
Ed, N5EI

I've owned all three and think the 180A is the best of the lot. A
common complaint is the narrow audio on AM but I call that "selectivity"
(wink). Doesn't bother me because my top-end hearing response is
somewhat damaged.

GL,
Bill, WX4A/KP4

Bill M wrote:

I've owned all three and think the 180A is the best of the lot. A
common complaint is the narrow audio on AM but I call that "selectivity"
(wink). Doesn't bother me because my top-end hearing response is
somewhat damaged.

With the "death" of shortwave broadcasting, the bands have gone from so crowded
that nothing can separate the signals to enough spacing that wide AM
selectivity is a good thing.

Still plenty to listen to, but you no longer need a sideband splitter
(or synchronous AM detector) or narrow filters to hear it.

Geoff.


--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, N3OWJ/4X1GM
My high blood pressure medicine reduces my midichlorian count. :-(

Bill M wrote:

I've owned all three and think the 180A is the best of the lot. A
common complaint is the narrow audio on AM but I call that "selectivity"
(wink). Doesn't bother me because my top-end hearing response is
somewhat damaged.

I had a 170 for a short while when I first upgraded from novice and loved
the clock but didn't much like the overall tuning. Lots of backlash,
and the dials were hard to read.

When I traded it for an R-388, it was a night and day improvement... stuff
I could barely head on the 170 was well above the noise floor.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 09:50:00 -0700, Cadiscase wrote:

Can someone compare the above receivers or direct me to a site that
does?
I am interested in buying one of these and need to make a decision of
which one does what.
I did look up the reviews on eham. It was good but lacked a bit of
comparitive info. Thanks

I have a HQ-145XC(with the clock). It is single conversion under 10MC,
then dual conversion above that. It has a crystal filter that works very
well, the audio is OK. The HQ-180 is the "top of the line". If you can
get one of those, then that would be the choice. The HQ-170 is Ham Band
only, not general coverage.

On 10/29/2011 05:50 PM, Nomen Nescio wrote:
wrote:

Can someone compare the above receivers or direct me to a site that does?
I am interested in buying one of these and need to make a decision of which one does what.
I did look up the reviews on eham. It was good but lacked a bit of comparitive info.
Thanks

Saw a few Hammarlund sites on the net...information seems available.

I had only one experience with a Hammarlund but I think the electronics
leave alot to be desired. The physical contruction was par for the period,
solid heavy case, etc. but the components were not very good. The tuning was
rough and quality was lacking. Most of all, audio was very poor.

I would look at a National or Collins or Drake before I would ever look at
another Hammarlund. The Nationals can be huge but the audio is absolutely beautiful.

There were several series of Hammarlund receivers. The "Superpro"
receivers were the top of the line and there were several models over
the years from the very first Hammarlund "Comet Pro", SP-10, SP-100
series, SP-200 series, SP-400 series and the final SP-600. The middle
of the line general coverage receivers had 6 positions on the band
switch and consisted of the models HQ-120, HQ-129X,HQ-140, HQ-150,
HQ160, and HQ-180. The cheaper receivers had 5 position band switches
and lesser quality parts. These models included the HQ-100, HQ-145,
HQ-200, and HQ-205(with CB xcvr built in).

The HQ-110 was a ham band version of the HQ-100 and was not of the same
quality as the HQ-170 (ham band version of the HQ-180).

On Sat, 29 Oct 2011, Cadiscase wrote:

Can someone compare the above receivers or direct me to a site that
does? I am interested in buying one of these and need to make a decision
of which one does what. I did look up the reviews on eham. It was good
but lacked a bit of comparitive info. Thanks

From "73" for March 1963, where there's buying guide that is pages and
pages long, likely quite extensive up to the time of publication.

HQ-145X Four bands (pretty normal for the time), full shortwave coverage
from the bottom of the broadcast band to 30MHz. Double conversion above
10MHz (the SP-600 did the same thing). The X is supposed to denote a
single channel crystal oscillator so you can have one crystal controlled
channel. A crystal filter, which is bound to be a single crystal, with
loading to allow for different bandwidths. A banddspread dial, sounds
like an actual extra variable capacitor (unlike the SP-600 that just
had an extra dial for finer calibration). The description mentions a
notch filter, but that may be the crystal filter too. The HQ-145 came out
in 1958 and variants ran at least until 1963 when this article was
published. Apparently the C model had the clock. So the lettering in the
model, unlike some manufacturers, is used to denote options rather than a
slight modification of an earlier model.

On paper it has about what every general coverage receiver has, the double
conversion above 10MHz definitely would make a difference though.

HQ-170
HQ-180

These sound like identical receivers, with the 170 being Ham band only
(160 through 6meters, triple conversion for the 40meter band and up), the
180 being general coverage (540KHz to 30MHz, triple conversion above
7.8MHz with calibrated bandspread dial for the ham bands. Noteworthy is
that it breaks into six bands which will be an improvement over average SW
receivers of the time). The 170 came out in 1958, the 180 in 1961 and both
still on sale in 63 when the feature was published. It says the 170 has
15 tubes, plus rectifier and regulator, the 180 has 16 plus the rectifier
and regulator. IFs for both is 3035MHz, 455KHz and 60KHz. Both seem to
have some sort of filter at 455KHz, and then better (and variable
bandwidth) filter at 60KHz.

It's hard from the description to see how much of a difference there is
between these two due to one being ham band and the other general
coverage, and how much due to the general coverage coming after the ham
band one and maybe getting some improvements. Both have product
detectors, and it sounds like selectable sideband.

Clearly these last two are better than the first. The 170 and 180 clearly
are much fancier design than the average shortwave or ham receiver of the
era, especially when a lot of them didn't deal with SSB (so you had to
turn down the RF gain, turn up the audio gain and sometimes fuss about).

Unless there's a big price difference, better to get the 170 or 180.
Which one depends on what you want to do with it. A general coverage
receiver can always be useful, and since the ham band one doesn't have
the WARC bands (that came well after the receivers came out) the general
coverage does get them. Back then, it made sense to get the ham band
only, so you'd have a lot better dial for the ham bands, but nowadays most
hams have transceivers already, so a general coverage receiver supplements
that, rather than because it's cheap or dual purpose and then ending up
being a bad choice as a ham receiver. If the 180 is as good for SSB as
the 170 (which seems implied by these listings), the 180 is probably the
better choice at this point, so long as the two are in equal shape.

The 170 does have the six meter band, which might be handy. When I had an
SP-600, that did go up to 54MHz, I found it was good enough at the time
for SSB at 6meters, though I had nothing to compare it to back then. It
seemed stable enough, and because of the double conversion (a similar
first IF frequency) image rejection was good; of course, that may not
translate to Hammarlunds less expensive receivers.

Michael VE2BVW

Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
Bill M wrote:

I've owned all three and think the 180A is the best of the lot. A
common complaint is the narrow audio on AM but I call that "selectivity"
(wink). Doesn't bother me because my top-end hearing response is
somewhat damaged.

With the "death" of shortwave broadcasting, the bands have gone from so crowded
that nothing can separate the signals to enough spacing that wide AM
selectivity is a good thing.

Still plenty to listen to, but you no longer need a sideband splitter
(or synchronous AM detector) or narrow filters to hear it.

Geoff.


Well, yes and no. Even though the SWBC bands are nowhere near as
crowded as in the past all it takes is 'one' situation where Rcvr A's
ability supercedes Rcvr B and then you're sold

All three are good radios. Gen Coverage vs ham band only coverage makes
the 170 an apple compared to the other two oranges in some respects. I
used a 170 for a while for hamming but I fell upon a sweetheart deal on
a 180A and made the switch. Although it didn't have that big vernier
knob like the 170 it was every bit as good - and maybe even better. I
wound up liking the 180A better - in part because I do like to cruise
the spectrum and I didn't feel like I lost anything on the ham bands by
going with a GC receiver.

Scott mentioned dial backlash. There must have been a problem with his
radio! Its a direct drive and I can't imagine how you could get
backlash unless the 'disc' had worn spots.

-Bill