[Hammarlund] SP-600 JX-26 & SX-42

[Craig Roberts]

Of his new SP-600 JX-26 DAN COTSIRILOS wrote:

"...super receiver!!!"

You say that because you didn't have the unparalleled pleasure of 
replacing the 50+ Black Beauty capacitors contained within the bowels of 
the earlier versions.
Now that that task is completed, however, I love my very early SP-600 
JX. It's a friendly companion.

I've just purchased a receiver that may be even more challenging to 
restore.  It's a Hallicrafters SX-42.  My very first shortwave receiver 
was an SX-42, back when I was an "official" Popular Electronics Monitor 
(WPE0BKI, if I remember correctly). My Dad gave it to me for my 13th 
birthday after purchasing it from my Boy Scout Radio Merit Badge 
counselor for $75 which, when you think about it, wasn't all that cheap 
in 1959.  I saved up earnings from my paper route and eventually added 
the R46 "reproducer" to the radio.

I "toured the world" with that machine, basking nightly in the eerie 
green glow of its Raymond Loewy-designed dials. I became an avid SWL and 
collected QSL cards from all over the planet, including one that would 
revisit me in a bizarre way a few years later. Sometime during the early 
days of my Navy career (probably when I entered flight school in 
Pensacola), Navy intelligence officers did a background check on me. I 
was subsequently interrogated (mildly) about the volume of mail I had 
once been receiving from Moscow -- according to a nosy neighbor.  The 
letters in question were Radio Moscow program schedules and souvenirs, 
of course, but they did raise an eyebrow or two during the frostiest 
days of the Cold War.

At any rate, I sold the ancient SX-42 and speaker in the '70's when I 
modernized to new fangled solid-state gear. In recent years, I've 
regretted that move and have now "put it right."  Sound familar??

Enjoy your SP-600, Dan.  You're right. It is a "super receiver".  Just 
be careful about which QSL cards you collect.

73,
Craig
W3CRR
www.aerialacts.com