zenith transoceanic royal 1000 - transistors, circa 1960

[Jeffhs]

I was outbid for the RD-7000Y at the last minute (the last few seconds, actually), so I lost the auction. However, not being one to give up on anything easily, I looked around a bit on eBay today after the auction ended, and found a Royal 3000-1 from 1966. I won that auction, so I'll be expecting my new (to me) Royal 3000-1 in about a week. The seller has an excellent feedback rating, and in fact said in the item description he had done a lot of restoration work on the radio -- cleaned and lubricated the band switch, volume and tone controls, replaced the original dial lamp with two bright white LEDs, replaced the spring-loaded switch for the lamp with a regular switch so that the lamps will remain on as long as the switch is in the on position, and also replaced the original battery case with a rechargeable NiCad pack. The charger is included.

BTW, I think I'm better off with the 3000-1 anyway, as that radio is built on a metal chassis and has socketed transistors--like my Royal 1000-1. The 3000-1 is 47 years old, but since the set has been overhauled and cleaned up (in a manner of speaking; the seller said nothing as to whether or not the radio has been recapped), I think I'll have a very good set when it gets here. The seller said in the description that the radio sounds very good for its age.

I've wanted a T/O with FM for quite some time, but this one is a treasure because of all the work that's been done on it to improve an already excellent radio--one of Zenith's best TOTL portables. It was just too bad when the company went out of the radio business after the R7000, as when they made these radios, they broke the mold. We'll never see the likes of the T/Os again.

[AdamAnt316]

The Royal 3000-1 is a great radio. I've had one for years, but my use of it was hampered by the fact that the battery box was missing its cover (IMO, the second most important revision to the 7000 (first being the moving of the telescoping antenna to its own compartment) was giving it an integrated battery holder). However, I recently acquired a Royal 1000/3000 battery box which had corroded contacts. Removed its cover, snapped it onto the half-box I had, and I'm back in business. Just need to buy a bunch of D-cells in bulk...
-Adam

[Jeffhs]

My new (to me) Zenith T/O 3000-1 arrived this morning via UPS. Worked right out of the shipping box, bringing in every local and a few distant FM and AM stations in this area near Cleveland -- and it sounds great; typical Zenith. (I will test the shortwave bands after dark.) The radio survived the trip from the Bronx, New York to my apartment without a scratch, although I'm not surprised as the seller packed it exceedingly well. The set had been upgraded from standard D-size batteries to rechargeable cells; they are on charge as I write this. Band switch and volume/tone controls were cleaned and lubricated by the seller before shipping, so there was absolutely no noise of any kind when I tested the radio after it got here. They don't make them like that anymore.

[jr_tech]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

I will test the shortwave bands after dark.

I hope that you are not overlooking the possibility of some excellent SW reception on the higher bands during the daytime. Right now (about 4:10 pm) for example, I am easily hearing the code practice sessions on W1AW from my location near the West coast on 14.04750, 18.09750 and 21.06750 mHz. I am not hearing W1AW on 7.04750 and below. Also not hearing it on 28.06750 mHz.

jr

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by jr_tech

I hope that you are not overlooking the possibility of some excellent SW reception on the higher bands during the daytime. Right now (about 4:10 pm) for example, I am easily hearing the code practice sessions on W1AW from my location near the West coast on 14.04750, 18.09750 and 21.06750 mHz. I am not hearing W1AW on 7.04750 and below. Also not hearing it on 28.06750 mHz.

jr

I tested my Royal 3000-1 on all its shortwave bands a couple days ago. It works, but the stations I heard were mostly high-power religious broadcasters. (I was using the radio's built-in FM/SW rod antenna, as I cannot erect outdoor radio antennas here due to lease restrictions.) I tried looking for WWV on 5, 10, 15 MHz and found what sounded like it, but the signal was so weak I couldn't be sure what station I had. Same for CHU in Canada. I thought I heard something that sounded like their clock ticks on 3.3 MHz, but again, the signal was so weak I couldn't be sure whether it actually was the Canadian time and frequency station. This struck me as odd, since I live within one mile of the south shore of Lake Erie and should have been hearing CHU coming in like gangbusters. The radio's performance on the AM broadcast band is good, but not great and certainly not fantastic; I can hear most Cleveland AM stations, including a 5kW oldies station about 35 miles east of here, during the day.

FM reception on my Royal 3000-1 is, again, good but not great. It gets most Cleveland FM stations and a couple of out-of-town ones fairly well, but it isn't too good with distant FM reception most of the time even though, being as close to Lake Erie as I am, I should be hearing some stations from Toledo and Detroit, not to mention southwestern Ontario, Canada during good weather conditions. I have heard one station in Sandusky, Ohio on 94.5 MHz, but to date no other distant, out-of-state stations. I chalk this up to the fact that the Royal 3000-1, built in 1966, was one of the first AM-FM portable radios and is not nearly as sensitive as its predecessors; this means the radio was not meant for use in low-signal areas such as far suburban or fringe. (I have a Royal 1000 from 1958 that works better on AM, and probably shortwave as well, than the Royal 3000-1.)

As far as CW reception goes, even if I could hear W1AW here (actually, I probably can, as I am only a couple hundred miles from Hartford, but it would be worthless as I am about to explain), I couldn't use the station for code practice since the Royal 3000-1 does not have a BFO circuit, which of course is a necessity for code reception. As the radio is now, W1AW's automated code practice sessions would sound like thumps instead of tones. I could use the receiver in my Icom IC-725 for W1AW reception if I could put up an outdoor antenna, but, for reasons I mentioned above, this is absolutely out of the question. If W1AW were available on Echolink, however, I would be able to get code practice that way; maybe that's my answer to keeping my code-copying skills from getting so rusty it wouldn't be funny. I'll have to look on EL's station list; I'm almost sure they do have W1AW there, and being on the Internet, the code signals would, of necessity, have to be modulated.

[jr_tech]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

I could use the receiver in my Icom IC-725 for W1AW reception if I could put up an outdoor antenna, but, for reasons I mentioned above, this is absolutely out of the question.

Your Icom is very likely the most sensitive and selective receiver that you have... as long as you are not trying to transmit, the antenna does not need to be outdoor or matched for low SWR. A 10-25 foot extension cord strung around a room can make a dandy SW antenna in a pinch.

For grins, last night I connected my Icom IC-R8500 to a 15 ft chunk of hook-up wire slung over the back of a chair, and could easily hear WWV on 2.5, 5, 10 &15 Mhz, and CHU (fairly weakly) on 7.850 Mhz. Might be worth a try for those W1AW sessions.

A small loop can work quite well for AM reception on the Icom.

jr

[Jeffhs]

Getting back to my Zenith Transoceanic 3000-1: Is there any way to increase the sensitivity of this radio on FM by means of adjustments to trimmers, etc.? The set has a separate FM tuner. In my area (I am some 35 miles from downtown Cleveland and about ten miles further from the transmitters, most of which are located in a southwestern suburb of the city) it will receive every commercial Cleveland FM station but one (using its built-in Waverod FM/SW antenna) quite well, but it doesn't do so well with the low-power college, university and translator stations below 92 MHz. There are at least two stations, one of which is a translator for an NPR station some 60 miles from here, in that part of the FM band which I would like to be able to listen to. I realize the Royal 3000-1, built in 1966, was one of the first transistor portable radios with FM, but I would think it would have been designed, as are almost all older Zenith radios, to receive low-power and other weak stations where other sets fail to do so. I can hear the NPR translator on 89.1 MHz quite well, actually, as the transmitter is only a few miles away, but the signal sounds distorted; the other stations come in very well. I am currently charging the radio's batteries (it was modified by its previous owner to use rechargeable NiCad cells rather than the usual nine D cells) on a hunch that the batteries may be weak, thereby reducing the overall sensitivity of the set. If a freshly charged set of batteries does not cure the sensitivity problem, where else could it be? As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I am curious to know if there are other things I can do to get this radio working as it probably did 47 years ago, such as adjustments of antenna trimmers and such, although if the solution involves realignment, I won't touch it since I don't have a signal generator or alignment instructions. Again, I am aware that the Royal 3000-1 was one of the first portable radios to cover the FM broadcast band, but somehow I think mine could do better than it does in the signal-pulling department, short of using an external FM antenna. Also, the AM sensitivity of the Royal 3000 does not seem up to par. I can get most of the AM stations in Cleveland, its suburbs and outlying areas, but I cannot hear AM 740 in Toronto (for example). The dial calibration seems quite far off on the low end of the AM band as well; for instance, WJR 760 in Detroit comes in at about 650 or thereabouts on the dial, and WGR 550 in Buffalo, usually very good here, doesn't come in at all on my Royal 3000. This (and the FM sensitivity problem) seems well out of character for any radio made by Zenith. Was the quality of their radios starting a downward spiral in the mid-1960s that continued until the company exited the radio business in the early '80s?