[Hallicrafters] sx 110

[Glen Zook]

When I was a Novice Class in 1959 "the" Novice Class
and early General Class station was a Heath DX-40 and
a Hallicrafters SX-99.  Myself, I had a WRL Globe
Chief 90A and Hallicrafters S-107 (reboxed S-53A) and
upgraded to a Hallicrafters S-85 about a year after
upgrading to General Class, then shortly thereafter I
replaced the Globe Chief with a Heath DX-100.  There
were a lot of Novice Class using the S-38 series,
National SW-54, and Heath AR-3 receivers.

The receivers drifted, many were basically deaf above
14 MHz, the bandpass was "broad as a barn", etc. 
However, no one ever told us how "bad" our receivers
were so we acquired a cebreal filter, just used them,
didn't complain about QRM, made thousands of contacts,
and, basically, "had a ball".

Not many amateur radio operators in those days owned
Collins or the "top of the line" by any manufacturer. 
In general, at least 90% of the receivers that were in
general use until at least the last half of the 1960s
were junk by today's standards.  When I hear someone
complain about QRM on SSB from stations 5 KHz away or
from CW stations 2 KHz away I start thinking that it
should be a requirement that all new amateur radio
operators have to operate for a year using the wide
bandwith, drift prone, deaf as a doornail above 14
MHz, etc.  Then after they were allowed to operate
with "modern" equipment the number of QRM complaints
would be almost zero!

Glen, K9STH




--- WA1KBQ at aol.com wrote:

I don't think the SX-110 receiver really had a 
matching transmitter. With the addition of an s-meter
and a crystal filter the SX-110 was the deluxe version
of the S-108. I would call the S-108/ SX-110  series a
short-wave listener receiver rather than a
communications receiver though it does have a 
stand-by/ rec switch. The S-108/ SX-110 was the final 
iteration of the original 1939 S-20R. Hallicrafters
sure got a lot of mileage  from that one basic circuit
over the years and you can trace the lineage all the 
way through starting with S-20R and then on to S-40,
then  to S-85 (and SX-99), which led to S-108/ SX-110.
The tube types evolved a little but the circuit was
essentially the old S-20R circuit which by the way was
pretty good considering what it cost. I have always
thought the S-20R was hands down the best buy at the
time and offered the most bang for the buck in 1940.
As others  have already mentioned the SX-111 was the
intended match for the HT-37. SX-111 covered amateur
bands only in CW-AM-SSB modes with a product detector
(at least in the later versions) and was a real
communications receiver. I have used them  and they
are actually quite good though not as mechanically
robust as an SX-101  or SX-101A.









Glen, K9STH

Website:  http://k9sth.com


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