I fired up the SW-4A this morning, and I'm monitoring Radio Australia, at 0915
UTC, on 9590khz. I've got it hooked up to the Antenna Supermarket Eavesdropper
SWL Sloper. I'm the original owner, and no I'm sorry, but it's not for sale. I
purchased it in 1975, from Trigger Amateur Electronics, in River Forest,
Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. I've never had to change a tube, or a filter
capacitor, and the crystal controlled direct frequency dialing is still dead-on
accurate.I believe this was the first shortwave receiver to offer the crystal
controlled direct frequency dialing. I'd be interested to know if anyone has
one in their shack, and how it's holding up. Good DXing to you from the Chicago
burbs, Gary

"Kachina 78" wrote in message
...
I fired up the SW-4A this morning, and I'm monitoring Radio Australia, at
0915
UTC, on 9590khz. I've got it hooked up to the Antenna Supermarket
Eavesdropper
SWL Sloper. I'm the original owner, and no I'm sorry, but it's not for
sale. I
purchased it in 1975, from Trigger Amateur Electronics, in River Forest,
Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. I've never had to change a tube, or a
filter
capacitor, and the crystal controlled direct frequency dialing is still
dead-on
accurate.I believe this was the first shortwave receiver to offer the
crystal
controlled direct frequency dialing.

The radio's local oscillator is only half crystal controlled. The bands are
determined by which crystal is switched in and the actual local oscillator
frequency is determined by a permeability tuned oscillator. Similiar PTOs
(without crystals) have been used in car radios for decades.

Other Drake radios going back to the late 50s have used pretty much the same
setup.

Drake's PTO setup has very good frequency stability and is easy to tune.


I'd be interested to know if anyone has
one in their shack, and how it's holding up. Good DXing to you from the
Chicago
burbs, Gary

I bought one off from another contributor to this group. It's still a good
performer, and I like it. However, some of my other radios suit me better.
I like to spin a main tuning knob across several bands to get a sense of
what's hot at that time. I then tune across a band using a bandspread dial.
The Drake, with it's 500 kHz bands and preselector, is alsmost imposssible
to be used this way. Also, there's many more stations outside the Drake's
tuning range these days.

Frank Dresser

"Frank Dresser" ) writes:
"Kachina 78" wrote in message
...
I fired up the SW-4A this morning, and I'm monitoring Radio Australia, at
0915
UTC, on 9590khz. I've got it hooked up to the Antenna Supermarket
Eavesdropper
SWL Sloper. I'm the original owner, and no I'm sorry, but it's not for
sale. I
purchased it in 1975, from Trigger Amateur Electronics, in River Forest,
Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. I've never had to change a tube, or a
filter
capacitor, and the crystal controlled direct frequency dialing is still
dead-on
accurate.I believe this was the first shortwave receiver to offer the
crystal
controlled direct frequency dialing.

The radio's local oscillator is only half crystal controlled. The bands are
determined by which crystal is switched in and the actual local oscillator
frequency is determined by a permeability tuned oscillator. Similiar PTOs
(without crystals) have been used in car radios for decades.

Other Drake radios going back to the late 50s have used pretty much the same
setup.

I was going to comment on that line, but then I suddenly couldn't remember
the mixing scheme of the receiver. I seem to recall that it used premixing,
ie the variable oscillator is mixed with the crystal oscillator to provide
the signal needed for the actual signal mixer. I know that was done in
some of the Drakes, getting away from the scheme used in their earlier
receivers where they had in effect a receiver that tuned a fixed 500KHz
range, and then a crystal controlled converter ahead of it to get the various
bands. The premixing has the advantage that another mixer isn't in the signal
chain to overload, though I think it's up in the air how much else it might
save since one has to filter that output of the premixer well to avoid spurs.

But since I couldn't remember if the SW4 used premixing or not, I wasn't sure
if that was what the poster was talking about, though his term
"crystal controlled direct frequency dialing" is rather ambiguous.

And of course, Drake wasn't the first to use the scheme of a tuneable receiver
with a crystal controlled converter ahead of it. The date from the late
forties or early fifties in some commercial receivers, with Collins likely
being the first to issue such receivers.

Michael

Chuck Harder, www.forthepeople.org www.chuckharder.com (don't
forget to click on the Suwannee River music thingy) used to push them
Drake R4's.Chuck Harder used to say take your Drake R4 shortwave radio
outside and get it away from that stuff inside your house that messes up
your radio reception.
cuhulin

wrote:
Chuck Harder, www.forthepeople.org www.chuckharder.com (don't
forget to click on the Suwannee River music thingy) used to push them
Drake R4's.Chuck Harder used to say take your Drake R4 shortwave radio
outside and get it away from that stuff inside your house that messes up
your radio reception.
cuhulin


Your cranial damage is showing again, Steve..



Chuck Harder says:

=============================================
All the Chinese have to do (which we believe they may have ready) is
to put two space stations geostationary over the USA. One East and
one West of the Mississippi. With simple technology that uses car
batteries, capacitors, a long circular wire loop and a few other
parts, energy can be generated and focused into the loop antenna,
which is then beamed downward. When triggered, it can shoot a burst of
monster energy down to Earth in a split second.

What next? You might see a little flash. But, then your computer will
no longer work. The gas pumps won’t work, the grid shuts down, stores
can’t re-order stock, phone switches at central offices are DEAD and
all computer operated systems are affected. The US Government has run
this scenario secretly and, if it were to occur, it is my opinion that
in less than one year 90 percent of the population would be DEAD.


http://www.forthepeople.org/restorin.htm
==============================================

The US government must obviously BAN all car batteries!


--
"The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is
probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners."

Ernst Jan Plugge

I used to work at an auto/truck/lawnmower factory in
Florence,Mississippi.Looka here,,, do y'all have any idea whatsoever
about 100 percent pure sulphuric acid! I Gurrantee y'all,y'all DON'T
want to mess around with that stuff!!!
cuhulin