[Hammarlund] Ultimate receiver??

[Meir WF2U]

I knew I forgot to mention another one of my ultimate receivers.... I
completely agree: the RA17 family is also up there! I have the RA-117
variant.

73, Meir WF2U
Landrum, SC

-----Original Message-----
From: hammarlund-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:hammarlund-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of
bavarianradio at comcast.net
Sent: Friday, July 05, 2013 9:54 AM
To: dh2fa at darc.de
Cc: Hammarlund at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Hammarlund] Ultimate receiver??

I guess I could chime in here as well. I own many of these fine
receivers(only ones with tubes, Chuck didn't specify tube or SS) This
doesn't appear to be a thread about "favorites" but the quest for the
"ultimate" receiver. As previously stated,  It Depends...
I had a visitor about a year ago who worked in Government Ops who used
R-390/390A's and SP-600's to "fingerprint" CW transmitters.
He said that he and many of his compatriots preferred the SP-600's to the
R-390 radios but were prohibited to use the 600's for the high speed scope
photography because you couldn't verify the exact frequency. He preferres
the audio from the 600's and of course the ease of tuning. One receiver that
has been left out (unless I missed it) is the British Racal RA-17 family of
receivers. I have 3 of them (2-"L" models and a MKII/C3) and it seems to me
that bandcruising reached a new speed with these radios. The only problem as
I see it is the preselector "chasing" that you have to do to keep the front
end peaked. It would be nice to have several tuned RF stages in the front
end instead of the cascode single stage. But the tuning is fast and the
radio performs very well. Besides, they appear in numerous James Bond
movies, that has to count for something!!!  73 Ross W1EKG