[R-390] OT: Other Radios You Like

[Richard Loken]

On Sun, 24 Feb 2008, 2002tii wrote:

> If you listen at all to AM, once you have tried a radio with good 
> selectable-sideband synchronous detection, passband shift, and a proper 
> notch filter, you will never look back, no matter how much you love 
> boatanchors. The same is true of the passband shift and notch filter for

Well, in my opinion, Your Mileage May Vary.

I will opine about the negative aspects of digital radios first: I have a
Sony ICF-7600D and it is indeed convenient to dial up a frequency and it is
also convenient to have a few dozen frequencies stuffed in its memory
...IF... you can remember which of those channels has the frequency you
want.  I also find I can never remember how to use the seldom used functions
like putting a frequency into memory - I have to look it up in the manual
every darn time and (as last week in Burlington Ontario) I do not carry a
library of manuals with me on my travels.

On a analogue radio - every knob has a purpose and a label so I rarely 
forget how to do something and a browse of the front panel labels will 
overcome those "senior's moments".  My Sony has the usual assortment of 
multipurpose obsurely labelled little rubber buttons which do not tweak my 
memory.  I also have poor vision and cannot read a lot of the lables or the 
obscure hiroglypics on the display without a magnifying glass - these are 
rarely problems on some elderly Zenith Transoceanic.

Now about synchronous detectors.  My Sony (fortunately) will switch between 
a diode detector and the sync detector and I can select sidebands and tweak 
the tuning but...  the diode detector sounds better when things are good so 
I don't want to use the sync detector all the time.  The synch detector is 
not a miracle worker: it does a good job of cleaning up a badly distorted 
signal but it does not make it into push-pull 6V6 armchair copy, it just 
makes it readable.

Alas, radio is no longer cool - all the best 22 year olds listen to radio on 
their computers or for a monthly fee on satellite radio so a lot of the nice 
digital synchronous detector radios are no longer available except on the 
used market. Sony has stopped importing their toy radios into Canada and 
they will not allow their US vendors to sell across the border and Drake has 
gone out of the shortwave radio business so a lot of our favourite solid 
state radios are in the same catergory as our boatanchors: obselete, 
unsupported, and in limited supply.  Parts for digital radios are going to 
run out long before we run out of 6K7's, now ain't that wierd.

> boatanchors), and the R8B is the best of the bunch.  (The Drake SW8 is the 
> second-best, IMO, then there is a huge gap to everything else.)

I keep intending to buy an R8 so it can grace the shelf beside my two Drake
4-lines, I should do that sooner rather than later.

-- 
    Richard Loken VE6BSV, Systems Programmer - VMS  : "Anybody can be a father
    Athabasca University                            :  but you have to earn
    Athabasca, Alberta Canada                       :  the title of 'daddy'"
    ** richardlo at admin.athabascau.ca **             :  - Lynn Johnston