UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum - View Single Post - A relatively cheap portable SW receiver with SSB/CW and analogue tuning?

paulsherwin · 16th Apr 2018, 10:13 pm

I don't think anything like this is still made. An old Sony ICF-5900W would fit the bill, with a decent dual conversion tuner and built in BFO (though it has no LW). These are still quite common secondhand, and while they're not cheap you should be able to find one for less than £100. They don't share the reliability problems of the later (smaller) Sony SW sets which use surface mount components.

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/sony_icf_5900w.html

The cheapest solution is to build a simple external BFO (one transistor and an IFT) and use it with any domestic radio with SW coverage, but it can be tricky to stop the BFO signal swamping reception.

16th Apr 2018, 10:13 pm	#2
paulsherwin Moderator Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Oxford, UK Posts: 27,947	Re: A relatively cheap portable SW receiver with SSB/CW and analogue tuning? I don't think anything like this is still made. An old Sony ICF-5900W would fit the bill, with a decent dual conversion tuner and built in BFO (though it has no LW). These are still quite common secondhand, and while they're not cheap you should be able to find one for less than £100. They don't share the reliability problems of the later (smaller) Sony SW sets which use surface mount components. https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/sony_icf_5900w.html The cheapest solution is to build a simple external BFO (one transistor and an IFT) and use it with any domestic radio with SW coverage, but it can be tricky to stop the BFO signal swamping reception.