You are all leaving out TRF sets.  The simplest of all.  Of course they don't work for CW .  I didn't read the forwarded message about RDF carefully enough but from skimming it I think whoever wrote it is confusing or confounding some different things.  Precision signal strength measurement is not necessary.   The description of how a regenerative receiver works is plain wrong. Way back the Kolster RDF was common on ships as well as an RCA set. The antenna is really the important part. 



Sent from my Galaxy


-------- Original message --------
From: Tom Lee <[email protected]>
Date: 1/7/23 2:23 PM (GMT-08:00)
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [ARC5] How Edwin Armstrong invented the superhet

I agree with Hue. The superhet is certainly easier to operate (once aligned), but I don't know how one could call it easier to build than, say, a regen. Morgan's The Boys' First Book of Radio famously has a regen project, not a superhet, for good reasons.

-- Cheers
Tom


-- 
Prof. Thomas H. Lee
Allen Ctr., Rm. 205
420 Via Palou Mall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4070
http://www-smirc.stanford.edu
On 1/7/2023 13:55, Hubert Miller wrote:
I saw a comment that the superhet was easier to build. Wrong. That's why so many manufacturers in the late 1920s to late 1930s aiming for the "more affordable" market offered TRF and regenerative radios. That "Clipper" radio offered in the today auction that was mentioned here, is a mid 1930s glorified regen  built big with lots of knobs, but at a fraction of the price of a National or Hammarlund superhet. No tracking, virtually no alignment, minimal engineering and construction expense.
Hue Miller



Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone

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