On 8/7/2023 9:21 AM, Michael Kana wrote:
> My R23 will be used more as a tuneable IF RX/Q5'er

Since it's already been hammified, I hope no one will be upset by
mentioning a couple of the best "hacks" for this receiver.

As Mike says, the most common use was as a Q5-er, tapping onto the IF
output and tuning it to 455 (or whatever the IF is) for an added stage
of conversion.   But the real gain came from the nice narrow bandpass
filters in the R23/BC-453.

One of ham radio's most prolific writers, Don Stoner, saw the potential
to do more, and wrote two articles about using the LF command set as the
basis of a complete receiver.

#1 - The Novice Q5er (80 and 40 meters):   scroll down to the link on
Ken's page here: http://w7ekb.com/glowbugs/rx/receivers.htm

#2 -  The 1959 SSB Q5er (80-10 meters):   This article was published in
CQ magazine and isn't readily available.  It uses a very clever
single-crystal circuit to generate the required LO frequencies to cover
the SSB portion of five ham bands with a 3 tube converter and a 2 tube
product detector.  I've always wanted to build one, but have played
around with simple converters and with the85 kHz IF set to it's
narrowest position the BC-453 is indeed capable of good SSB selectivity
(about 3kHz).

Some long-forgotten ham builder really took it to the next level with
the homebrew receiver that I have - building from scratch using the
BC-453 IF transformers and circuitry - described here:
https://tinyurl.com/2ju6apcm

These are fun radios to experiment with and which can still be used to
provide good performance on the ham bands.

73, Bob W9RAN

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