Best SWL RCVR to buy?
 

Carter-K8VT wrote:
wrote:

I've never used any of the modern drake stuff, but I
have a lot of the old. IE: 2C receiver, 2CQ speaker/multiplier,
R4 receiver, T4XB transmitter, etc, etc. They are very good
radios overall. In the 60's when they came out, they were
probably 2nd to only collins. And some, but not all,
actually preferred the drake 4 line over the collins S line.


Count me in for "actually preferring the Drake", at least my "4B line"
as opposed to the Collins "S-line".

The collins is probably slightly better, but it ain't by a
whole lot.


Well, it clearly depends on your definition of "better". Possibly the
Collins mechanical filters gave better ultimate selectivity performance,
but they sure fell apart in QRN conditions.

To me, the beauty of the Drake was its flexibility--you could add bands
by just adding crystals, it had provision for crystal controlled
transmit for your favorite net frequency or auto-start RTTY net, you
could easily FSK the transmitter for RTTY and the receivers had
provision for placing a spare audio output jack to feed your RTTY
demodulator. Also, the Drakes were great for CW, while the Collins was
noted mainly as an SSB rig.

Sorry, forgot to mention a couple of other nifty Drake features--the
great pass band tuning that let you do rtty and shift interference out
of the pass band for CW and SSB, and the inclusion of 160 meters. Also,
even though it was not an inexpensive radio, it was waaay more
inexpensive than Collins.

Best SWL RCVR to buy?
 

Telamon wrote:
In article ,
"Brian Denley" wrote:

David wrote:

We were talking about DXing, not program listening.



I use sync for DX all the time - it often helps weak signal copy.

People that do not have a receiver with a properly operating sync
detector do not understand how it improves reception.

These poor souls don't understand what they are missing.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California
----------------------------------
You can say that again.

Since I built an outboard synch detector with the AD607 I have been
amazed
each and every time I receive a signal with fading. The difference
between
a synch detector and a standard diode detector is HUGE. Even the simple

improved AM
detectorat:http://www.amwindow.org/tech/htm/alowdisdet.htm
will offer significant improvements over most stock detectors.

The addition of an AD607 to my R2000s and my R390 has given me what
amounts
to new radios.

I have listened to SW since 1962 and I still can't get use to lack of
"flanging"
distortion on DX stations.
I almost miss it.
Almost.

I would love to have the Kiwa MAP and the Sherwood SE-3 outboard
detectors
to compare to my simple efforts.

Terry