[Premium-Rx] Premium-Rx Digest, Vol 161, Issue 3

[Terry O']

R-389?  UGH!  I bought two many years ago.  They weigh a ton and the 
tuning is ungodly stiff.  Even after a full tear down, cleaning and 
relube you'll wear out your wrist in a few minutes of scanning the 
bands.  That's why the damn things have motorized tuning.  They are just 
too laborious to manually tune.

The R-389 performance is, as expected, really good.  But even with top 
notch tubes in the RF portions, the Watkins-Johnson 357 (R-1401) was 
neck and neck in performance, if the local BCB transmitters were far 
enough away.  The R-389 simply wasn't worth the weight, size, and tuning 
hassles.    I sold them both when the fascination of owning something 
rare, but not fun to use, wore off.

Nowadays, at home I use the WJ DMS-105 because switching supplies, 
particularly for LED lighting, have flooded the lower end of the urban 
radio spectrum.  When I travel I use a Tecsun PL-660 and an AirSpy HF+ 
(though I won an SDRPlay RSP1A at a hamfest and now like it better).  A 
perfect trade off between performance and space in my carry on bag.  I 
listened to a lot of LF and AM broadcasters from around the 
Mediterranean while in rural southern France last fall.  The added bonus 
is France shut down all its AM stations, except for one in Brittany, and 
there were no IM problems.

Terry O'


On 4/2/2020 8:46 AM, Bob Betts wrote:
> Well, if you can't find a Collins 389...who can(!), you might want to c0nsider an upconverter. I've been using my R340 and 8711 barefoot with a quasi Beverage and decent lowpass filtering. It's hard to tell if the upconverter helps of running barefoot is better. There are times when one is a little cleaner than the other...then it flip-flops according to time of day/night, WX condx, etc. But that keeps the hobby fresh and fun. Also have good luck with 8718 and 6790GM.Gud sigs to all and please stay safe,Bob, N1KPRHere's a linkhttp://www.bobsamerica.com/upconv.html
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