[Premium-Rx] RACAL 6790/GM opinion

[Ken Maltz]

I've had mine for about 4 years and have enjoyed using it mainly because of the high quality of the recovered audio. In my monitoring position, it has driven large relatively inefficient speakers with ease. The audio amp has a great deal of headroom and seems well-mated to the filter bandwidths for each mode. If you are interested in LF-VLF-ELF monitoring, there are configurations available to cover this range and they do very well down there.

One must remember that these receivers were not meant for ham and SWL use and consequently lack certain features, such as variable bandwidth controls, notch filters, noise-limiters that hobby type receivers, such as the JRC and Drake receivers have. So, depending on your intended application, this may or may not be your "ideal" receiver. But...the 6790 is a pleasure to tune, has wonderful audio, an easy to read display and, if you need to have it serviced or need advice and parts should you wish to repair it yourself, folks such as Gary Wingerd are available to assist. The service and user manuals are first-rate and available from several sources.

It's worth mentioning that the only trouble I've had with mine resulted from one of the tantalum caps going south; but replacement was quite simple and the caps are widely available. Apparently, RACAL would have possibly done better to use tantalums with a higher working voltage specification, as this component failure is a known defect. But a simple swap for a higher working voltage cap will do the trick.

Good luck,

Ken Maltz