[HBR] Building new radio...

[Ian Wilson]

Although I haven't built an HBR, I have embarked on a number of tube
receivers, of different levels of complexity.

Personally, I find that you need to leave room to make mistakes and
to rethink parts of the design. Building something in stages or modules
is useful. One appealing approach is to build a very good single band
receiver, then add crystal controlled converters ahead of it to cover
other bands.

Another good approach is to use a single conversion with a crystal
filter. If you use a 'premixer' approach for the LO you can use a low
frequency VFO and get good stability on all bands (I believe this is
what the later Heathkits did).

You can also take advantage of much better mixers to remove the
need for [much] RF amplification, and thus improve performance in
the face of large signal interference. Some time soon I plan to try
using some of the beam deflection tubes (6AR8, etc) to see if
this promise is borne out in practice.

You may find that your dream architecture changes as you build.
This is another good argument for modularity :).

So I would keep it simple, and plan to keep things flexible while
you try out your ideas. This stuff is highly addictive, though!

73, ian K3IMW