[Boatanchors] Making a SX-110 Better?

[Gary Schafer]

My first receiver was an S38, the one with no RF gain control. Talk about a
dog on CW, pretty much unusable. I discovered how to put an RF gain control
in it and what a difference that made. First transmitter was a home brew
6AG7 driving an 807. built it from old TV parts including the TV
transformer. Never did have enough plate voltage to get much power out but
made lots of contacts with it. A few months latter got the general license
and cathode modulated the transmitter with an old console radio that was
stripped down to just the push pull audio amp. I think it was a pair of
45's?

Next thing I was getting on side band and the S38 got an old beacon receiver
tied to the IF for added selectivity. I think that it was a Carlson that had
200 or 239 kc Ifs in it. That was my Q5r. worked pretty well. Next I hooked
up the VFO portion of an ARC5 transmitter to the S38 to use as the tuned
oscillator. Wow, what a stable, selective receiver I had then! It was even
fairly well calibrated with the ARC5 dial as I retuned the VFO so the dial
read the proper frequency. This was all on 80 meters. Sensitivity of the S38
was good enough on 80 meters without an RF stage so things worked pretty
well for the kluge.

This was when I was 13 or 14 years old and didn't know any better. A friend
of mine had an SX99 at the time and I thought that it was a great receiver
until using it a little.

73
Gary  K4FMX

> -----Original Message-----
> From: boatanchors-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:boatanchors-
> bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Glen Zook
> Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:47 PM
> To: 'Carl'; KA1KAQ''Todd; anchor at ec.rr.com; The Pollacks
> Cc: 'Boatanchors list'
> Subject: Re: [Boatanchors] Making a SX-110 Better?
> 
> I have said this numerous times before, but, here goes again:
> 
> Back in the 1950s and even well into the 1960s, the average Novice Class
> receiver, and, for that matter, a lot of the receivers used by higher
> class licensees, drifted, were "broad as a barn" selectivity wise, often
> was basically deaf above 15 MHz, etc.  People who haven't had to use
> this type of equipment do not realize how things were in the "goode olde
> dayes".  The average "low end" transceiver these days run circles around
> what many operators used.
> 
> However, no one told us how bad our receivers were, so, we just made
> thousands of QSOs and basically "had a ball"!
> 
> Glen, K9STH
> 
> Website:  http://k9sth.com
> 
> 
> 
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