[Hallicrafters] SX 88 Fantasies

[Ka9p at aol.com]

In keeping with this week's themes I was tempted to propose a copyright 
infringement contest, but got diverted by something remotely Halli-related.

About 35 years ago, at the ripe old age of 15, I was standing at the Starved 
Rock hamfest, a hundred dollars in hand, agonizing over whether to bring home 
a fellow's beat up SX88 with a couple extra switches on the panel, or an RF 
deck with a pair of 4-400's.  I can see me standing there, in the hot sun and 
dust, fiercely debating whether a chassis pulled out of an old Johnson Desk was 
a better buy than that forlorn looking testimony to the Halligan name.  I can 
still smell the inside of the 88 as I tried to figure out if there was any 
suspicious odor that might give away the reason the grisley old guy was willing 
to part company with it.

1500 watts and three weeks later, after the fire and smoke cleared, I 
realized that the 88 would have been the better choice, and wondered all these years 
if life would have turned out differently.......

Anyway a really wonderful friend just completed a restoration of an SX88, and 
let me come over to be the first person to put it on an antenna, completing 
the 35 year old fantasy.  This is the kind of friend y'all should have.  The 
thrill was there.  The cw selectivity was superb, the audio mellow and clean, 
sideband sounded sweet despite the absence of a product detector, the S meter 
was just way cool, and the way the dial light was masked out on every band 
except the one in use made me realize I hadn't wasted my time drooling over the 
June 54 QST and the story of the SX88 going to Clipperton.  

So now I've got another great SX88 memory.  These are moments old radios are 
meant to invoke, I guess, and I expect the reason we share a reflector, eh?

73, Scott