Hallicrafters S-53A

[JDaniel]

Jeff,

Excellent find there mate. I too am the proud owner of a Hallicrafter S95 thanks to jaymanaa and the last AK Crap Swap. Mine is in beautiful shape outside.

I just found the manual on-line at the link above too.

Now I need to tinker with it and see if I can get it working. I've been so busy I've neglected it.

JD

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by compucat

The only thing about this radio that isn't that great is the BFO. It is practically useless for receiving voice SSB transmissions. It was obviously designed for use with CW code transmissions.

If the BFO works for CW it should work for SSB. I've had receivers in my 34 years in ham radio (and several years prior to that as a shortwave listener) that have had so-so BFOs, such as a 1936 Hallicrafters S19R "Sky Buddy" (which was little more than a broadcast receiver with SW coverage thrown in almost as an afterthought) et al., but they still did at least a passable job of receiving both sideband and CW. (When tuning in a SSB transmission on one of these radios, or any SW receiver with a BFO for that matter, one must tune in the signal exactly so as to beat against the BFO signal; this is a skill that is learned and perfected only by practice and experience.)

I think the problem lies more in the S53's tuning arrangement than anything else. As was pointed out in another post, the tuning is extremely critical on this set; mention was made that the amateur portion of the 40-meter tuning range is only about 0.5 inches wide on the tuning dial (I looked at a picture of the S53 on another site and saw just what the person was talking about--the radio doesn't have a decent bandspread control either; that is to say there is a bandspread adjustment, but it is nowhere near as good as a more expensive receiver would have). These receivers were made for casual shortwave listening and Novice amateur use, not serious communications purposes. There were countless other very low-end SW sets made in the '50s and '60s aimed at beginners in radio, such as Allied/Knight-Kit's "Star Roamer" four-band receiver, Heathkit's GR-64 and GR-54, and even Knight's "Ocean Hopper" receiver. The S19R Hallicrafters receiver I used before I got my Novice ham license was terrible. I could get decent reception on the BC (broadcast) band up to about 10 MHz or so, using an outdoor wire antenna, but I don't recall ever hearing anything much on band 4 which tuned up to about, IIRC, 35-40 MHz (the low end of this band was somewhere around 20 MHz). The best amateur-band receiver I ever used was a Hallicrafters SX101A Mark III, which was the receiver in my Novice amateur radio station in the early 1970s; it beats everything, including my present HF rig and almost all that followed it. This receiver could hear signals most other general-coverage sets wouldn't touch; its tuning dial, which was calibrated, of course, for ham bands only, was perhaps a foot wide on each of the six bands the receiver covered, so there was no need for a bandspread control.

Ham band only receivers are the way to go if you are serious about amateur radio; sets such as the S53 and others by Hallicrafters, etc. are good to start out with or to use if you aren't sure how much you'll like being a ham, or even if you'll be in the hobby for long, but if you plan to branch out into areas of the hobby such as message traffic handling with the ARRL's National Traffic System or contesting, etc. receiver and antenna upgrades are a must if you want the maximum enjoyment of these facets of ham radio.

It makes no sense to spend hundreds of dollars on equipment for an amateur station if you are only going to use it a year or two, let your license expire, then put the gear away in a closet or basement and forget about it. I was a member of the ham radio club in high school in suburban Cleveland, circa early 1970s; when I first joined, in my sophomore year, we had five licensed amateurs including myself, all Novice class (except one upperclassman who had a General license at the time and went on to get his Extra class soon thereafter). Two years later, in our senior year, that number had dropped to one. The others had let their Novice tickets expire, but by the time we graduated I had my Technician license; I later (as in ten years hence) took and passed my General class test and earned that grade of license, which is what I hold now.

I apologize for going off-topic as I am sure I just did, but when I get to talking or writing about amateur radio I cannot seem to stop. This has been one of my favorite hobbies for almost 35 years; I am not about to give it up (just renewed my license for another decade), even though my move from a three-bedroom house to an apartment almost seven years ago has forced me to use indoor antennas, which don't seem to work very well (at least on HF--high frequency, 3-30 MHz) with my equipment which now consists solely of an Icom IC725 nine-band 100-watt transceiver I won as the grand prize in a hamfest ticket drawing 15 years ago. Also, for two meters, I have an Icom IC-T22A handheld transceiver. I'm a member of the Lake County, Ohio, Amateur Radio Association and frequently participate in the club's Thursday-night 2-meter ragchew net. Those of you in the Cleveland area, especially Lake or eastern Cuyahoga County, with at least a Technician license are welcome to join in. You do not have to be a LCARA member, although the club is always looking for new members regardless of license class or even if you are not yet licensed. (LCARA also has volunteer-examiner testing sessions for all classes of license at least once a year.) The net is on the LCARA 2-meter repeater, 147.81-147.21 (tx/rx [transmit and receive] repectively, +600 tx offset).


73 (best of regards in ham talk),

[Fran604g]

Hi, I just wanted to thank you guys (and the rest of AUDIOKARMA'S contributors) for the vast amount of knowledge one can find at AUDIOKARMA! Because of this thread in particular, I now have a schematic AND advice for my S-53a. I've been carrying this around with me since I left my parents in 1976. It still sports the broken tuning knob that was caused by me yanking on the power cord some where around 1960, when I was 2. It still works great, but the more I read here, the more I realise that it's time to put togather a work area and go through all the old stuff I've ignored for the past 3 decades! Thanks agian!