The HQ 180 is a good band cruser, but I was spoiled with my 51J3 and racal
6217A ... to me it takes alot of skill to design a good analog radio.....no
phase
noise or birdies like a digital radio.......I still like how the HQ 180
light up the room at night....GC



"AComarow" wrote in message
...
George Craig hath opined:

The thing about the HQ 180 I didn't like was the lack of accurate
frequency
read out and the radio woud drift... but it was the technology of the
time.....GC

I don't recall any of the '50s-'60s Hammarlunds as drifty, but then there
are a
lot of things I don't recall from that period. My 145AX, 170A, and 180AX
hardly
drift after warmup.

As for readout, my first ham receiver was a Zenith Transoceanic. Not only
did
it not have a BFO, meaning I had to read CW from the presence or lack of a
carrier, but the whole of the Novice portion of 40M couldn't have been
more
than a quarter-inch wide. The dial pointer took up a fair chunk of that.
The
Hammarlunds of the era felt like they had infinite bandspread by
comparison.
Interpolating to within a few kHz was plenty for me.

Now, of course, digital has spoiled all of us, including me. But when I
get
away from my Grundig Satellit 800 and Sony 7600 and back to my
boatanchors, I
feel like I've gotten home from high school in the afternoon and it's time
for
some serious knob-twiddling.

Cheers,
Avery W3AVE
Potomac, Md.