good shortwave radios?

[Mmike]

Just look for any Amateur transceiver such as Icom, Yaesu, Kenwood and TenTec from the 90's onward for around 300.00 and you will be in business and then study for your license and talk as well!

73 de -Mike

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Mmike

Just look for any Amateur transceiver such as Icom, Yaesu, Kenwood and TenTec from the 90's onward for around 300.00 and you will be in business and then study for your license and talk as well!

73 de -Mike

I have an Icom IC725 (won it at a hamfest in 1991) with a very hot receiver. Used it with about three different antennas, worked 49 states and a handful of foreign countries, now using it with a Barker and Williamson AP-10A apartment portable antenna.

Getting back to the receiver section of the 725, as I said, it is very sensitive and, with the optional 500-Hz CW filter (which I installed on mine years ago because I operated CW quite a bit until I moved here--the rig's 100-watt signal trips one of the GFCIs in my apartment, but works very well on the local radio club's ten-meter net and doesn't bother the GFCIs on SSB) is quite selective as well. Icom did not cut corners with this radio. The only receiver I've used in 36 years as a ham that could match or even rival the one in my '725 was the Halli SX-101A Mark III I had in my Novice/Technician station, in the early 1970s until 1985. The SX101 had a switchable crystal filter and a notch filter; the crystal filter could narrow the selectivity all the way down to 500 Hz--excellent for CW.

I also had a Halli SX62a for a few years. Like the SX101, it was very sensitive and selective on all eight bands, including FM. I used only an old car-stereo speaker with it, but it still sounded wonderful on FM, even in the basement of my former home, using just a length of wire on the antenna terminal. I often find myself wondering how good that receiver would have sounded on FM had I connected it to a really good speaker. I think it would have sounded at least as good as a good mono phonograph of the period (1950s-'60s), as the SX62 had, IIRC, a well-built audio stage with two 6V6 tubes in push-pull parallel. Like the old Zenith radios, they don't make them like that anymore, although, as you mentioned, the recent-vintage Icom rigs don't do badly. I intend to hang on to mine as long as it works as well as it does.

73,

[Mmike]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

I have an Icom IC725 (won it at a hamfest in 1991) with a very hot receiver. Used it with about three different antennas, worked 49 states and a handful of foreign countries, now using it with a Barker and Williamson AP-10A apartment portable antenna.

Getting back to the receiver section of the 725, as I said, it is very sensitive and, with the optional 500-Hz CW filter (which I installed on mine years ago because I operated CW quite a bit until I moved here--the rig's 100-watt signal trips one of the GFCIs in my apartment, but works very well on the local radio club's ten-meter net and doesn't bother the GFCIs on SSB) is quite selective as well.

I like the 725 but and prefer the receiver on the Ic-735 for it's sensitivity and age. I have a 746 Pro and a 756 Pro and the DSP does amazing things for a receiver now a days. I am thinking of stepping up but don't want to pay 11,000.00 for the IC-7800!

73 de Mike