[Premium-Rx] USSR R155P receiver

[John Miles]

<< This is clearly the synthesiser module.  This set is therefore
click-click-click tuned by the decade switches to 100Hz increments plus
almost certainly a fine tune over the 100Hz increments to "fill in the gap"
between tuning steps.  This is OK for tuning to predesignated channels but
is completely useless for monitoring and general tuning up and down.  The
description of it as a "surveillance receiver" in the Helmut Singer
catalogue is nonsense.  Thise type of receiver was generally used for
point-to-point links either on land or at sea.  Monitoring receivers have a
free tune control such as you find with the RA1772 and RA6790.>>

Hmm, that's an opinion I've never heard before.  The R&S ESM 500 is
certainly a "surveillance receiver," and it tunes in 1-kHz steps (unless the
optional SSB demodulator is turned on).

As long as you can tune in steps at least an order of magnitude smaller than
your narrowest IF bandwidth, or 10-Hz steps for SSB, what does additional
bandspread really buy you?  At the risk of sounding like Bill Gates, 100 Hz
should be enough for anyone.

(This, coming from a fellow whose homebrew rig tunes DC-1 GHz in 1 Hz
increments. :)

<<3.    I expect the front end has a valve or two, loads of old-fashioned
tuned circuits and is probably pretty bomb proof.  Russians retained valves
in their front ends for far longer than we did because of the vastly
superior survivability of valves to the dreaded EMP.>>

That, and the fact that they couldn't make decent semiconductors to
(literally) save their lives.

-- john KE5FX