[Premium-Rx] Skanti Receiver R-8001

[Michael O'Beirne]

Dear Roy

I have no personal experience of the R-8001 but when I was in the Army we 
used a similar HF SSB transceiver with an output of 250W.  It had a fairly 
similar front panel, but in grey.  I would be surprised if much of the 
receiver section was not based on the R8000 series (or may be vice versa).

It formed part of the VRC323 ground station, the prime purpose being last 
ditch post-nuclear strike comms between major HQs.

It used a 4 tone FEK data system with all the frills such as complicated 
error detection and correction, in-band diversity, patching etc.  Thankfully 
it was never put to the real test, systems have changed, and these sets are 
now available surplus in the UK.

The set was beautifully built and reliable and delivered excellent 
communications quality SSB.  Personally I would have preferred a somewhat 
wider SSB bandwidth of 2.7 to 2.9kHz rather than the maritime spec of 
2.4kHz, but that's me.

A drawback was the membrane panel.  This aids reliability and waterproofing 
but there were no knobs at all requiring a lot of button pressing, which you 
may find a bore.  That was no problem for us because we used it with a PC, 
and in any event all the frequencies, modes and other requisite comms data 
for a military exercise were inputted via a floppy disk (in lieu of the 
usual wads of paper that we had to use with earlier systems), and the clever 
electronics did all the hard work.

I hope you enjoy it.
73s
Michael
G8MOB

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roy Wildermuth" <w2it at rochester.rr.com>
To: <premium-rx at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2012 8:15 PM
Subject: [Premium-Rx] Skanti Receiver R-8001


>
>
> Hello All
>
> Looking for advice on a Skanti Receiver. The one in question is a R-8001. 
> It is in beautiful shape.
>
> Curious if there are opinions on this radio. And also (if this is allowed) 
> what a fair price would be. There are two on EBay. One is from the guy in 
> China and the other is from a guy in PA.  both are in the $1500.00 range. 
> One was sold not long ago for $860.00. I will say that it is a very pretty 
> radio and supposedly quite rare;
>
> Roy Wildermuth