[Hallicrafters] FRG-7

[bonddaleena at aol.com]

I just had to add my $ .02 worth............

In defense of the Yaesu, I feel it's an excellent older radio. There are 37 'reviews' on eHam. The rating is 4.8 / 5. Pretty darn good. YES, I KNOW these are subjective and anecdotally based reviews, but just take the time to read them and you will get a feel for the radio's strong points.
Osterman's book rates it 5/5. Same kind of rating as a Collins S Line or the Drake R4-B. The Frog hears anything my well aligned R4-Bs can.

Being a degreed ham for just about 50 years, I have some knowledge. I also have well over 150 radios, mostly receivers. I have 3 Collins, 20+ Drakes (3 R4-Bs and a Sherwood equipped R4-C). Couple of R390As, etc. I also have a huge collection of test equipment (another passion of mine).

I bought my FRG-7 a few years ago, because it was in excellent shape and I was curious what all the glowing reports were about. I was frankly amazed by the performance. Makes me want to throw rocks at my Ten-Tec! POS.
After a couple of years, I did the Kiwa mods to it, electrolytic cap replacement IF filters, etc. I also did the mod to 'slow down' the Fine Tuning
control. This control is used in later production..... I use the radio daily to listen to, here in the shack when using the PC.
I found that a small retouch after a 10 minute warm up, will let you stay tuned into a SSB Net for as long as you want to listen to it, without retuning.

Some people say it's too complicated. Dudes, if you can't figger out how to:
1. select the MHz segment
2. select the bandswitch (four freq ranges)
3. peak the preselector
then................
you need to go back to collecting arrowheads or stamps. God forbid, when you go from the CW portion to the SSB portion of a particular band, you might have to (slightly) repeak the preselector!

Recently, I purchased the black, Sears version of this radio. It was in near NIB condition. The previous buyer returned it to the seller, cause he 'couldn't figure out how to use it'. His loss. Radio works perfect.

One last point, using a SCAF audio filter with these radios is an almost unbelievable combo.

And NO, I did not pay very much for either.

regards,

ron
N4UE