[50mhz] 5dB hard of hearing,... what?

[Michael N Hopkins]

>the the noise figure of the front end is around 5 
>dB, which makes it pretty hard of hearing.

In fact, that's too much for the majority of locations.  I'd have
progressive adult contemporary country all over 50.125 if I ran that much
preamp in Dallas.

Moreover, excess gain was the bane of  6M even back in the pre
transceiver age.  The converter companies offered 2M boxes, knowing a
6AK5 was fine for 6.   But the appliance collectors wanted Tecraft and
Tapetone converters for 6M too so they got them.  The Wallaman Cascode,
from TV tuners, was in style for a while since the 6M converters were
potboilers off the 2M and 220s.  Later Nuvistors were the "hot stuff."  
I ran an Ameco Nuvistor converter for several years in the '80s and was
never able to use all it's gain.  I had to back it off.  That degraded
the noise figure, sure, but kept the FM BCBs out of the IF too.

So, when when we hear," >(in) modern rigs...the design has sacrificed
sensitivity for strong signal handling capabilty,<"  We should say
hurrah, or "ah so."

If you ain't bouncing the moon, you had all the gain you needed on 50 mc
back in '58.

Michael, MNHopkins at JUNO.com, ab5L
Student of Tecraft, ICM and 6 Meter's Golden Age: 1956-58