A few pictures from the past

Here are a few pictures of previous receivers owned over the years and a bit of misc. thrown in, some of the pictures I have taken, others I have grabbed from elsewhere. ...Dave Z

Dave Z's shack back in 1980
(photo by DaveZ)

This was what my shack looked like back in 1980. The Yaesu FRG-7000 was a Gilfer modified unit with a narrower AM filter. Had the external speaker stuffed with foam, as it sounded very hollow if it was not. The FRG-7000's clock was great, never lost a second..the receiver was tiring to listen to, as it's digital circuits crept in the audio chain. Was really bad when headphones were used. The Panasonic RF-2800 was pretty hot item back in 1978-1979, the first "Low Cost" portable with digital readout. Worked fairly well for it's day , but it was not very stable, SSB was useless. The 2 LED clocks were built out of modules.

The very strange 1980 vintage Sony CRF-1.
Has a nasty trait of synthesizer failures.
(photo by DaveZ)

The Sony CRF-1 with a metal botton and a painted plastic top. This was a weird receiver to say the least. Performance was good, however in my view the ICF-2010 listed below (2001D) beats it out easy. It goes down for the biggest "pain in the rump" as far as ease of operation I have ever used on a SW receiver , portable or tabletop. Every 100 khz you had to pull the knob out to slide over to the next 100 khz segment (then push it back in). Only so-so dynamic range, good sensitivity but the CRF-1's real downside is it had a very noisy synthesizer. Another set that required a pre-selector to be tuned, and was pretty sharp. It did have a preselector bypass switch, but did not work well when out of line. These can be had in the used market once in awhile for excessive prices, but beware as the 4 panel (dial) lamps burned out fast and the volume control were known to fail more than not. Also a warning that synthesizer failure is very common with the CRF-1 and many of the parts can no longer be had. The rubber around the tuning knob has also been known to crumble into nothing as well (due to age).The analog power supply went into the empty battery cavity (yes it's normal analog supply being used here, not a switching type).

For many the ICF-2010 is the best receiver Sony EVER made, including yours truly.
(ICF-2001D outside North America)
(photo : N9EWO)

In my view the ICF-2010 (known as the ICF-2001D outside north america) is the king of ALL Sony receivers EVER made, yes even when compared to all of the CRF models. Excellent sensitivity, well chosen IF filtering for broadcast listening (SSB is too wide however), and very easy to use. But the real plus to the ICF-2010 is the excellent sync detector. The front end FET's can be damaged from static when connected to a external antenna.

IC-R7000 at the 1985 ANARC convention
(photo by DaveZ)

An intresting picture of the ICOM IC-R7000. This was a display at the 1985 ANARC convention in Milwaukee,Wisconsin USA. Matter of fact it never seen the marketplace until a year later. This was a pre-production model shown by EGE (a dealer now out of business), I remember strict insrtuctions that EGE had to ship this back to ICOM right after the convention.

Universal Radio stand at 1985 ANARC convention
(photo by DaveZ)

Another picture from the 1985 ANARC Convention in Milwaukee,Wisconsin. It's the Universal Radio Display. New that year was the Sony ICF-2010. On the way out was the JRC NRD-515 (see below).

The Drake R-4245
(photo by DaveZ)

The very "rare" Drake R-4245. However I'm not sure why this receiver became so highly rated ?? It's nothing more than a R-7A with a RV-75 VFO unit , oh yes in a pretty tacky looking tan cabinet. Very good dynamic range, sensitivity, and the synthesized VFO made the receiver stable after a 15 min or so warm up. Was very very far from being "commerical". Would never handle the daily demand of a heavy commerical user. The audio quality, when comparing to today's receivers, was very poor. Excessive distortion in AM reception mode. My ears could not take much over 30 min's of listening to SW AM broadcasting stations. SSB was much better.

I changed the filters around a bit, removing the CW filter and then moving them all down and cheating the filter posistion left and added a 150 ohm resistor in this spot to give me a approx 10~12 khz bandwidth. I also had to remove the display unit to get down to another PC board to clip the CW audio audio capacitor. Was a pain to get to. This helped the audio a great deal. This is another radio where the volume control has a nasty habit of failing, and are no longer aviliable from Drake. And to make that even worse it's a "Stacked Type" so even harder to replace with some other type. The tuning knob had way too much play, and ease of operation was not good. Every 500 khz you had to push a button or 2,rotate a hard to turn knob, and spin the "wobbly" knob all the way back down for bandscanning. We parted ways and do not miss this radio at all.

The JRC NRD-535, another JRC set with sour audio.

Ah Yes, the JRC NRD-535. I had the "D" (latest) version. I owned before, a NRD-515,and a NRD-525 ,so have felt the JRC feeling before. The 535 to me was the best that JRC had made so far .The JRC trait of poor audio continued in the 535 but no "Hiss" as was in the 525. Sync Detector and Notch Filter were useless on the "NRD" as well. Well could go on, a generally very well made receiver, but poor audio made me part with it.

The JRC NRD-515, downright sour audio more so on AM mode

While we are looking at old JRC radio's, we have to cover the NRD-515. This was the first JRC radio that I owned, as is the case with alot of pepole. It's die-cast front panel made it look and feel like a "real" radio. Worked very good for SSB and RTTY signals. Audio quality using AM Mode for MW or SW Broadcast signals, FORGET IT !!! It was sort like trying to listen to a radio with about 5 blankets thrown over the top of it (gee, maybe that's why Larry Magne used the term "Woolly"?). And this was in the 6 Khz filter bandwidth. I can remember I tried to clean things up a bit by removing a couple of capacitors that were in the input to the audio amplifer stage. This did clean things up a bit, however it also gave me alot of hiss. So that did not work. If you used ECSS on Broadcast Signals,this worked with good results. I can also remember that the tuning knob seized up alot, that it would get so tight that you could no longer turn it unless you gave it a good flip the other way. This was in the very early days of optical encoders, and JRC had to "roll" their own. This JRC was not modular construction and a good part of the RF/IF sections of the radio were on one PC board. I did not get it with the Memory Unit, but did purchase it with the NCM-515 Keypad (below).

The NCM-515 controller for the JRC NRD-515

The NCM-515 "Frequency Keypad Controller" was a intresting add on for the 515. It looked like an after the fact product. That is not orginally planned at the start. But it worked well and for the cheap skate that did not buy the memory unit at least gave you 4 memories. Buttons all had VERY GOOD feel. I can remember the connecting cable was about as thick as a cigar. It used some weird little photo battery for backup of the memories (someone correct me on this, I cannot quite remember ?) ?? Was not a cheap gaget, about $ 150.00 in 1984. After putting up with the crummy audio for awhile, my NRD-515 was history. Not many good memories here. Hey, here is a good question: Why does JRC take all of their pictures with the radio's tuned to 14.250.00 ?? I guess someone at the top who is Ham, is his (or her) favorite 20 meter frequency ??

My first "real" HF receiver, the Drake SSR-1

The Drake SSR-1. This was my first real SW radio I owned. This gave me my first listen of "Radio Nederlands" and programs like "His and Her's" and "DX Juke Box". Provided you kept the dial lamps off (which by the way were in sockets), this radio used very little current to operate. Was something like 100ma ?? I added a Gilfer GAR (E-Tek) frequency counter which worked well with the radio. This receiver was not made by Drake, it was made in Japan (for Drake). It was a Dual Up-Conversion scheme, with a manual pre-selector. Was not a fan of those manual pre-selectors, something else to have to play with. Dynamic Range was poor, but not many solid state radio's in 1977 were good in that area. The meter had no markings on it (make up your own scale). But for it's day was not a totally bad radio, lots of good memories here as most pepole's first shortwave radio will bring.

IF Frequencies used in some Sony "Dual Conversion" SW receivers.
Not to say that this list is complete (because it's not), but shows that "Up Conversion" was not used is all of Sony's more recent SW receivers.
NOTE : FM may have use different IF frequencies depending on model.

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