What a great little receiver! Many thanks for making the effort to demonstrate it in your 'radio room'. It's always much better to see something in action rather than talk about it. ..and that Marconi Receiver you have.. heavens, that's an item of the past! Please, treat us to more such videos Ray. A look of your 'radio room' and the rigs you have in there would be nice. Keep up the great work 'ol'boy' and stay safe with all these nasty events of late. 73's
I have a HF-225. Like you, I wish I had it in the 90s (when there was much less interference, lower noise floor, and even basic antennae could weedle out weird number stations)
I was a teen in the 90's. I had a Yacht Boy 400. I was only interested in HF Aero comms. On a Friday night i always used at stay up until 6-7am, listening to Shanwick/Gander etc, plotting the planes on an Aerad map. I saved and saved doing paper rounds, washing cars etc until i had enough money to buy one of these. Was a LOT of money back then and took me 2 years of saving everything from my jobs, even saving Christmas and birthday money! Day finally came and my Dad took me to Lowe's in Matlock to buy it. Was so excited! Even now they are great receivers. I remember i part exchanged it in the end for a HF225. Thank you for sharing Ray.
I used to listen to New York tower, MacDill AFB and Croughton in the 80s, when HF propagation conditions were really fab with my FRG7. Back in the day when airliners used AM, I remember listening to AM Shannon/Gander comms on a Murphy valve broadcast radio. They were very exciting times back then, for us SWLs.
Matt Bates Yes good times. Prop was great back then and hardly no interference at all. Also remember listening to stockholm radio where they would patch flight crew to their ops and would discuss inflight engineering problems. Wish i had a time machine.
Still got mine Ray, mint condition, with the keypad. I bought it from Lowe's outlet in Cambridge. Love it, and as you said, the audio is reall very good.... M0KED, Lincoln.
Great video Ray - I have been enjoying your excellent channel for a while now. This one particularly got my interest, as I got a HF-150 myself last year. As you say, brilliant little receiver with so much performance and capability packed in. Mine came without a keypad, and it is well worth using one - I have had a HF-225 since new with a keypad - so I made one, which is quite easy, one chip and a couple of general purpose transistors, as mentioned by UrbanBushCraft. I can share plans if you would like. I've become a bit of a Lowe collector, and jumped at a HF-235 recently. To the poster RGC198 who asked, it will operate in any mode at any frequency, so yes, SSB all through the tuning range.
Thanks for your interesting channel Ray. I used to like Radiocruncher to try and learn stuff. He's Good,But his regular 50 subs don't want to talk unless they are talking to each other about how knowledgeable they are. He gets lots of interesting people commenting but then give up. Understandable. cheers. Love your ghost stories as well.
A nicely made radio, but they were prone to overloading due to poor front-end filtering (just octave filters I think) and they later supplied a matching preselector. The Lowe HF225 was *much* better but more expensive - I still use mine!
Great video. I would like your opinion on something. I have three receivers, one tube and two digital. I’m in a muddle about which would be better to do. Would a doublet/dipole antenna (about 50 ft on each side) or would 100 ft as one long wire antenna be better to pick up more stations? I mention this as I am using my Hallicrafters S40b receiver right now and can do both setups. Yet, where I am beefing to connect it along the side of my house I need to put a small hole in my bedroom ceiling in order to get to the roof vent to do the setup. I’d rather not have to put more holes than needed to do the setup properly.
@@g4nsj thanks for the reply Ray! I’ve scoured the internet too mate! Maybe some one hear who reads the post might be able to point me in the right direction or maybe have one for me 🤞🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Hi Ray, that is an impressive receiver. Does the SSB work on all bands, including LW and AM? On AM, SSB would be handy hearing 10kHz spaced USA AM stations via DX over there. Also, does the BBC World Service still operate on SW over there? I haven't heard that for some years here. Thanks for the interesting demonstration. All the very best. Robert.
Hi Robert, yes SSB is on all bands. The BBC World Service are still around. See here ... www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2x9tqt6mc05vB2S37j8MWMJ/global-short-wave-frequencies
Hi Ray, great video thanks! I have had mine since new. I also keep mine on top of the same realistic scanner you have as well as using it with my mini-whip ;-) I have the keypad and have taken some pics inside if you want to see. Standard 3x4 matrix driven by a GPS SL409B chip + some other discreet components. I do have an issue with mine though - when I switch to higher frequencies it is like the audio is cut off....de m0tfy
AM shortwave is amazing. As a child I would listen to short wave stations on my fathers Shakespeare transistor radio and wondering where in the world all these strange voices where coming from. You can keep all this digital nonsense, it's the work of Satan...