[Milsurplus] R-808 versus SRR-13 resolution

[Ray Fantini]

Its hard to love a receiver that weighs as much as a compact car, and its about the same size. Maybe at one time they were a desired receiver but I have been doing this stuff for some time now and cannot think of any time that people wanted the RB or RA family of Navy radios due to the size and weight. I can think of going to fest back in the seventies and eighties and seeing one occasionally at fest and no one wanted to deal with them. The BC-348 and its ground cousin the 342 were at one time not a bad size and weight except maybe the BC-342/312 can be heavy but those huge battleship radios required two men and a boy just to move. Kind of like all the weird Johnson HealthKit Mohawk/Apache stuff from the fifties that you can not give away today. The HRO by comparison despite the Navy's attempt to convert it to a heavy weight like the RAS is smaller and easy to deal with.
I still use and love my old HRO RAS because of its size, takes up an entire desk and that old 6C6/6D6 construction still works eighty years after being built. 

Ray F/KA3EKH


-----Original Message-----
From: Hubert Miller <Kargo_cult at msn.com> 
Sent: Monday, July 22, 2024 3:55 PM
To: milsurplus at mailman.qth.net; Ray Fantini <RAFANTINI at salisbury.edu>
Subject: RE: [Milsurplus] R-808 versus SRR-13 resolution



>From what few data samples i have gathered from Pac NW hamfairs and estates, the RBA RBB RBC don't get no respect.
I see them unsold at these sales. People don't even look at them, don't see them. I suppose they are above the threshold of size + weight. It does not surprise me at all that the RBB series overloads less than the SRR series. A single conversion receiver will most often do better in this than a multiple conversion receiver unless the designers took those vulnerabilities into the design consideration. When i looked at the schematic for a toy i got recently, the Lafayette HA-800, i saw that the first IF had 2 tuned circuits and one feed into a transistor base. In other words, low Q. But - the receiver does weigh "nothing"
comparatively.
I just did a mental count and i realized i have accumulated a shocking number of HROs from WWII to postwar. I need to do something about cutting that down. But it also occurs to me that the HRO at least the single digit ones are very simple to maintain, a piece of cake compared. You open the lid, look in, and it's like seeing the street map of Salt Lake City and not Tacoma, WA.
-Hue Miller