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On Thu, 5 Apr 2007 14:37:55 UTC, "Roadie" wrote:
On Apr 4, 7:29 pm, (Michael Black) wrote: "SWL-2010" ) writes: I havn't had time to sit down and tune it much yet, but so far so good. I can't detect any drift to amount to anything. The sound is great. The two tone controls make it rich, or flat, any way you want it. And so far, like my older S350, the sensitivity is very good. I've used my S350 a great deal, so I thought I would get the newer verision since the price was right at only a hundred bucks. What some people forget is what it was like to have a low end receiver forty years or so ago. I bought a Hallicrafter's S120A (as I've mentioned before, it was a solid state receiver) in the summer of 1971, and paid something like $80, maybe a bit more, here in Canada. It was about the cheapest new receiver I could buy, and it was barely within my price range. It got the really strong signals, and not much else. It overloaded badly, it seemed to be from FM broadcast stations or maybe TV. The BFO was so weak that it wasn't useable for receiving SSB. The dial had all kinds of exotic locations listed on it, but not only was the calibration way off, but frequency readout was like "it's closer to the .5 than the .0 mark". It had horrible backlash on the tuning knob. It was awful. I claim it was the world's worst shortwave receiver, but I suspect it wasn't that different from many of the low end solid state receivers from the period, before real advancements had been made in making good solid state shortwave receivers. We suffered through them because we couldn't afford anything better. I imagine a $20 shortwave portable from Radio Shack today couldn't be worse than that old Hallicrafter's. Plus, you'd get a digital readout, and likely the tuning knob (if it wasn't tuned by up/down buttons) would have less backlash than that first receiver of mine. That doesn't mean that relative to better receivers of today the low end are perfect, merely that they can't be worse, and may be better for the simple reason that design has changed. Michael I think an old Hallicrafters S120A, Lafayette HA230 or Realistic DX150b are good examples of radios that were for very good reasons popular once upon a time. They can be fun to spin the dials on even today. Ultimately however, I think they serve as a benchmark from which to measure how far radio technology has advanced. It would not be difficult to find a digitally tuned portable priced at $50.00 to $100.00 that will substantially out perform any of those oldies. But it won't look or feel like a bandspread tuned receiver either, and it won't give the tactile and aural pleasure of slowly turning a weighted bandspread knob and listening carefully as stations gradually come into and out of tune. Eventually, when finding a specific station or jumping from band to band goes to slowly the game gets a little old. My first sw radio was an S-120, my mother got it for me for Christmas at Sears. It was terrible on accuracy, not very selective, but when you are 12 years old, hearing world stations was exciting. I think that I got over 40 countries QSL'd and many states(from OK at the time). Now, I have two restored boatanchors: An S-38 and its bigger twin, a Lafayette HE-10, both provide the experience you mention: the fun of seeing the old dial lamps and turning the big dials looking for that elusive station. -- "What do you mean there's no movie?" |