[Boatanchors] Receiver Technology

[Fuqua, Bill L]

Well, George, it looks like no one has anything to offer about boatanchor receiver design.
They want to argue about ARRL. I'd rather talk about early 1920's receivers and even those
before. It seems to me that people had problems breaking old habits, such as single conversion 
designs with low frequency IF. A good receiver had to have 2 RF amplifiers for image rejection.
   I am still impressed by some of the knowledge they had in the early spark era. Many had a good
understanding of resonance and impedance matching. Look at what Hertz accomplised. I bet very 
few know what the "Hertz Effect" is. He discovered it by accident while doing his RF experiments  using
a calibrated spark gap as a receiver. He made the first Beam antenna. Now today most people think beam
antenna means Yagi but any antenna that produces a "beam" is a beam antenna. He uses a parabolic
reflector in some experiments. 

73
Bill wa4lav

________________________________________
From: George Babits [gbabits at custertel.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 16, 2011 2:40 PM
To: Fuqua, Bill L
Cc: Boatanchors List
Subject: Re: [Boatanchors] Receiver Technology

Speaking of converters - -look at the old pictures of ham stations in the
late 1940's and 50's QSTs.  One of the things you will see is a lot of RME
HF-10/20 converters ahead of a  fairly decent receivers.  Those converters
are really something.  I hooked one up ahead of a BC-224B (12 volt version
of BC-348) last fall and the DX really jumped out of the noise.  I was
somewhat astounded.  Now I know why my "mentor,"  Pete W0JYW, used one ahead
of his HQ-129X back in 1957.  RME's VHF-152 is a pretty hot (relatively)
converter as well.

  As for ARRL and QST, they both serve a purpose, but there is little of
interest to the builder or boat anchor fan.  That is probably where the rub
is.  We need to remember that they did pretty much "save" amateur radio
after both WW-I and WW-II.   I'm an avid boat anchorite and builder so QST
has nothing for me.  Oh well; such is life.

Keep the filaments lit,
George
W7HDL