Mystery HF plus 144 Mc Coms Receiver

[Radio1950]

Mystery Receiver for a quiet moment's reflection.

I was in a second hand store recently and spotted a 1968 ARRL Handbook at a ridiculously low price. I bought it even though have a 1963 book and a lot of them are online in PDF.
In the back was a single sheet of paper, a photocopy of a spec sheet for an unknown GP coms receiver, probably also from the 1960s, like the book.

It appears to have HF and 144 Mc, me being nostalgic, and that's what the spec sheet uses.

It got me thinking that I didn't recognise the actual receiver type, and wondered if anyone here can remember it please?
The tube lineup smacks of 1960s Japanese built Trio, Lafayette, etc, and similar to my old Lafayette HE30.
The 144 Mc facility, built in, should tie it down to a specific type.

For your amusement during the austerity.

[Radio Wrangler]

220v only power input listed. Unusual for a small appliance advertised in an American publication. Japan is split with 100 and 220v regions (50 and 60Hz as well!) Someone must be trying to flog European market models in the US.

I wonder if that really is a full receiver for 2 metres, or whether it's a plain HF set of the usual type for the ear with a built-in 2m converter?

David

[Radio1950]

Gday Wrangler,

I meant that the Spec Sheet was a loose sheet of A4 paper, not part of the US ARRL Hbk.

I think that the Hbk owner maybe was also the receiver owner, and the receiver was for the Australian market, but I cannot recall it.

Like you, I suspect the 2m front end was probably an internal converter attachment.

Someone out there probably has one of these Vintage receivers.

[Radio Wrangler]

Thanks,

That clears up something that looked very odd.

Apart from the 2m band, it looks rather like a lot of the 'Lafayette' receivers that were all over the advert sections of the UK magazines. Flash-looking but rather junky. At the time they were competing against a mountain of better made military surplus gear. If you were going to have a low IF single superhet, would you have gone for an AR88/HRO or one of these cheap but new things?

I went the AR88 route back in the day.

There wasn't much point in considering new equipment until double superhets and proper SSB filters came along.

I too expect that set to have a converter into its highest frequency band. I wonder if it has a crystal LO for the VHF converter, or is it a free-running LC job.

It's interesting out of academic curiosity, but I'm not running out to find one.

David

[Richard675]

I think your mystery rx is the Trio ER-202. Similar to the Lafayette HE-80 which had a built in 6m converter rather than 2m.

A quick search around should find more info.

A nice spec'd receiver for its day.

[Herald1360]

I reckon Richard's nailed it.

https://elektrotanya.com/trio_er-202.../download.html

The spec sheet looks very familiar!

[Terry_VK5TM]

Same page plus schematic out of the manual for the Trio ER-202:

[Radio Wrangler]

That looks better than I expected!

A crystal oscillator with multiplier stage for the 2m converter. Uses the next-to-highest freq band as a tuneable IF. BFO, product detector, proper FM demod.

Having only four HF bands and bandspread tuning makes it look like one of the cheapies that were going around. But it seems better than those.

Interesting set!

David

[Radio1950]

Yes - Richard got it.
Thanks to Terry for info.

More info and comment, term used loosely, here re HE80 inter alia-
http://www.noobowsystems.org/restora.../he-80-en.html

Now that I have read some of all the history, I do get twinkles of memories of these things coming back.

My father bought me a Lafayette HE30 in 1963.
At that time it was luxury, as I was in school and using home-made HF converters fed into a BC radio as a tuneable IF.
Actually these homemade setups were very sensitive and had reasonable image rejection, but the aesthetics were less than glamorous.
I can just remember reading about the HE80 in AR Magazine, but they were more expensive than the HE30.
Looking at the specs now, I can see that the engineering of the HE80 was quite acceptable, but retained the ubiquitous but unsatisfactory "Q-Multiplier".


Wrangler, in Australia there were few large WW2 receiver stations to "setup" later war surplus selloffs to disposal stores.
So there were few AR88s around, which appears to have been largely lend-leased to UK, and Russia?

I can remember R1155s, AR7s (Aust vsn of National HRO), AR8, AR88, B40, and some Aust AWA smallish desktop tuneables for "comfort" and Coastwatchers etc, all in disposal stores at various times of my youth in the 1950s and 1960s.
We did have quantities of BC342, 348 etc, and a few ARC Commands.

There must have also been some H. Superpros around, as we in Dept Civil Aviation used them as ATC emergency receivers. I can remember our workshops modifying them, sometimes for Xtal Control, and they even replaced the front panels (engraved German Silver no less...).
I was very jealous of my mates's SP600, which I can very fondly remember.
He also had a Scott; we called them "Great Scotts!"

So ...
We just didn't have access to much high quality vintage tuneable stuff.
And our jealousy of surplus receivers available in UK and USA prevailed.
So we bought HE30 type receivers partly because AR88s, SX28s, were rare here and expensive.

I have hijacked my own thread, and I hope I haven't bored you all to death.
.

[Radio Wrangler]

No, not bored at all. The UK had been saturated with all sorts of things, not just excellent receivers but lots of parts, unexploded bombs here and there and tons of specialised equipment. It was a great time for playing with radio. I grew up catching the tail end of it and felt regret at the time of plenty passing.

But time moves on and things have changed. All manufacturing seems to have run away to China. I remember M7B's under Leeds station, Fry's in California, I've seen footage of the Akihabara in Tokyo at its peak, and now I see video of people wandering around the technical markets in Shenzen.

Things have moved on and left us behind, or have we simply failed to keep up?

David