[Hallicrafters] SX-88

[Richard Knoppow]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <WA1KBQ at aol.com>
To: <hallicrafters at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Sunday, October 30, 2011 5:17 PM
Subject: Re: [Hallicrafters] SX-88


> If you do it purely for your own enjoyment it matters not 
> whether  you get
> approval from others. If the economic side gets to  be 
> important then the
> opinion of others starts to be important  also. Very 
> generally speaking this
> means in order to get the maximum  benefit or enjoy the 
> equipment to its
> maximum advantage most prewar stuff should  be maintained 
> as factory original as
> possible but most post  war stuff should be restored to 
> proper working
> order. The prewar stuff has very  little to offer when 
> working and the postwar
> stuff has very little to  offer unless it does work. Most 
> prewar stuff is
> historically significant  while very little postwar stuff 
> changed history to
> any great degree  other than perhaps the Collins R-388. 
> Every communications
> receiver the  various manufacturers offered right up to 
> the Collins R-388 is
> essentially the RME-9 circuit in a different looking box. 
> The RME-9 was the
> father of the communications receiver as we know it but 
> the Collins R-388
> changed everything.
>
> Regards, Greg
>

    I would not give the R-388 this honor because it was 
relatively late in the Collins line. The real changer was 
the 75A-1. That was the first ham or commercial receiver 
with a PTO and with the Collins system of fixed, crystal 
controlled first conversion and a tunable second conversion 
L.O. The stability and calibration of the 75A was superior 
to any other receiver made at the time plus it had very good 
rejection of images and other spurs. The first of the 
general coverage Collins receivers was the 51J which came 
out about a year or two after the 75A. The 51J-1 offered 
similar performance. The later 51J receivers, including the 
R-388, which is essentially identical to the 51J-3, had some 
improvements and just changes to the original but all 
offered similar performance. Later versions of the 75A RX 
increased the coverage frequencies and offered some other 
improvements right up to the 75A-4 with its mechanical 
filters and tunable I.F. It was the first receiver to offer 
the I.F. tuning and also the first to replace the simple 
single crystal filter with a notch filter.
     Collins ham transmitters, beginning with the 32V-1, 
30K-1, and the 310 series of exciters, offered the same 
frequency control method as used in the receivers for 
transmitting.
     Collins was expensive so they didn't exactly blow 
everyone else out of the water but they raised the expected 
performance of both receivers and transmitters to the point 
that the established ham manufacturers had to scramble. 
Eventually, it was not one of the "big three" that caught up 
with them but some smaller, independant, companies like 
Drake, Cosmophone, and for transmitters Central Electronics 
with their broad-band system. This is now common but was 
unique in the late 1950's.  Of course, Collins also can take 
credit for the first ham transceiver, the KWM-1. Whatever 
its faults (and there are still plenty on the air) it was, 
again, a unique box and others had to play catch-up.
     Now, I certainly agree that most receivers from about 
the mid-thirties until late 1940s were essentially the same 
thing in different packages although there was enormous 
variation in quality and performance due to being aimed at 
different markets. The best of the bunch were probably the 
Hammarlund Super-Pro and National HRO, which were also the 
most expensive.


--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles
WB6KBL
dickburk at ix.netcom.com