[Boatanchors] hq-170

[Glen Zook]

The HQ-170 is definitely light years ahead of my original Novice Class receiver, a Hallicrafters S-107 ("reboxed" S-53A) from 1959.  However, like many of the Hammarlund receivers including the HQ-100, HQ-110, HQ-160, HQ-170, HQ-180, and the SP-600 series they definitely are generally pretty "drifty" especially on 20 meters and higher frequency bands.

Now the HQ-120X, HQ-129X, HQ-140X, and the HQ-150X series are generally very stable after around a 30 minute warm up.  Back in college I had an HQ-140X that after about a 30 minute warm up that I could put on the old Reuters' New York to Havana RTTY news link (I had a Model 15 and a W2JAV terminal unit) and come back hours later to page after page of "perfect" copy.  It took a pretty stable receiver to do this.  Because of the stability I got another HQ-140X just to "have around" for general coverage.

There are those who point out that the SP-600 series was used by the military for all sorts of uses.  However, those generally were the versions that had crystal control available and the receivers were used with crystal control on fixed frequencies.

Now, like with virtually everything, there are exceptions in which individual receivers are very stable.  But, at least in my experience, the aforementioned receivers tend to be pretty unstable in terms of frequency.

Glen, K9STH

Website:  http://k9sth.com


--- On Thu, 7/17/08, Neil <neil at ghostdog.com> wrote:

OK... I cried as I read the blasts against the 170. That because I hated to see a receiver that I had put on a pedestal tumble down. I didn't know of it's flaws.
 
I was first ticketed back in the mid 60s while in high school in Hawaii. A ham friend, who's father taught at the school (and was a ham too), had an HQ-180. After school I'd walk up to his house and watch as he tuned around the bands with what seemed to me to be the ultimate receiver. Passband tuning, wow. I had an SX-110 at home, and the HQ-170 looked like God in comparison.
 
Now I'm back into hamming after a long long hiatus. I picked up an HQ-170 on eBay a while back as a DIY project. Needs lots of work, but I guess I'll still take a stab at it... even after the thrashing the beast just got on this group. At least I'll better know what to expect when it's tuned and tweaked up.
 
Old dreams die hard.