On Tue, 2 Jul 2013, Channel Jumper wrote:
'Michael Black[_2_ Wrote:
;806491']On Mon, 1 Jul 2013, wrote:
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My restored, aligned GPR-90 is coming home tomorrow - excite to try the
beast on my long wire antenna! Will report later, maybe post a video.
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I paid $20 for mine at a garage sale last August. I didn't get out to
the
garage sales early, so by the 1pm or so I expected to find little. I
turn
down a street where a sale had been advertised, and a couple of houses
away I could see a shortwave receiver, I couldn't tell what brand or
model, but clearly it was a classic. I get close, it's a TMC GPR-90. I
figure it will be way over my price range, but I ask and they say "$20".
I say "I expected three or four hundred" and they still said "$20". It
was too good a price to ignore. So I haul it home on foot and bus, the
other plans for the day cancelled.
And it sits there, other things in the way. The rectifier tube is loose
in the base, so I have dig out that box of tubes and hope I have one.
And
the fuseholder is missing, the piece that screws in with the fuse. That
may have come off on the trip home. So until I find those pieces, it's
not even getting turned on.
I don't know if it will need much work. Physically it's in great shape,
maybe a bit of rust on the bottom. No case, but that doesn't bother
me.
I assune that if I'd not come along at that point, it would have been
tossed. There have been garage sales at that house before, but this
time
it was younger people, relatively so, and I guess they were the kids
clearing out the hosue. When I did a search when I got home, I found an
earlier ad from the same area offering a GPR-90, so it had to be them.
They tried at $100 and had no luck, so I was the last call I suspect.
I've been going to garage sales since about 1990. And I never saw
shortwave receivers until one rummage sale in 2006, a Grundig Satellite
500. I find one about every year now, some just average analog
portables
with a band or two, but some digitally tuned and fairly high grade, and
I
pay almost nothing. I even got a Grundig mini 300 for 2.00, right after
getting a Sony SW-1 for ten dollars. The mini is an odd thing, single
conversion and analog tuning, and not a great receiver, but it has a
frequency counter so no need to fuss with dials. By making it extremely
complicated, the unit becomes much simpler. It's probably as bad as my
hallicracters S-120A I got in 1971, except with the frequency counter
dial, I can actually tune to a specific frequency. The GPR-90 is the
only
tube receiver in the bunch. I would have expected to find a cheap
receiver like the Hallicrafters S-38 or even a Radio Shack DX-150 long
before finding a GPR-90.
Michael
The Generations change.
The old people dies and the young people thinks that they see dollar
signs and that you can get rich off a old broken piece of junk.
When they realize that there is almost no one interested in it, they
either sell it for what they can get out of it, or they throw it in the
garbage.
The dumpsters at some hamfests are full of unwanted boat anchors.
Well you should have been around forty years ago, when the stuff was
really unwanted. It was tubes, it was am only, and nobody wanted it,
which made it cheap. Endless stuff that is now expensive passed around
for little or nothing. And that attritiion helps to make the current
equipment more expensive, since supply has gone down as demand goes up.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Not much call for a AM radio - not much to listen to anymore.
The GPR-90 was a mid-range receiver, not up there with the R388 but better
than a lot of stuff. It's not an "AM radio", it's a shortwave receiver.
And like so many of that era, it lacks a product detector but you can use
it for SSB by turning down the RF gain, turning up the audio gain.
But if you can find a general coverage receiver that does the Amateur HF
bands, there is still a lot to listen to when the bands are open.
Hook it up and enjoy.
If you do not have a amateur radio license, get one.
If you can fix a old radio, I'm sure you can study and pass a couple of
35 question, multiple guess tests...
You are clueless. You haven't noticed me posting in other newsgroups?
I'm sure by your CB handle I've been licensed longer than you, since June
of 1872, and the test was a lot harder here in Canada since it wasn't
aimed at the beginner.
Michael
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GPR-90
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