Yes, Ray, I always found the comment on the RAL to be particularly amusing: being a very "economically challenged" young ham, I used an NIB RAL-7 as my main station receiver for around 12 years for every mode, and found it to be a superb receiver. I still consider it to be the finest HF TRF receiver ever built.

My ONLY complaint with it was the non-existent frequency read-out.

I also had an RAK. I used it to copy the VLF Navy stations for code practice. One thing I was surprised about was that the RAK provided "single signal" selectivity: the "other side" of "zero-beat" simply wasn't there. I still don't know how RCA accomplished that.

Ken W7EKB