[Radio Wrangler]

Lots of RF gain in a supertuner is OK just so long as you have a supermixer to handle it.

Very few of these firms were into careful design at the system level. A standard failing was that there were hundreds of articles and books written on planning the frequency conversions of a receiver and combatting VFO drift, and getting noise figure of a stage down, BUT there was a general lack of info on how to design a system for good dynamic range.

Consequently there are tuners, receivers etc where the gain/loss distribution and the distribution of selectivity aren't poorly thought out, they weren't thought out at all. A lot of choices were done by copying someone else's and maybe tweaking something a bit.

For planning such systems, there was a lot of tedious arithmetic needed, so it was fertile ground for what to do with that new computer the department had bought.
Later on, spreadsheets were great for the task. Here's the one I built and used.

David