Amateur Communication Receivers: Still A Challenge?

AMATEUR COMMUNICATION RECEIVERS: STILL A CHALLENGE? The valve era Over the past forty years or so, communi- cation receiver design has undergone quite a revolution. In the days before transistors and Ics, there were some remarkably good receivers around. Typical among these were the AR88, the Hamerlund Super-Pro, the Marconi CR100, the BC348, and the Racal RA17. After the end of the Second World War, many radio amateurs were using either one of these classical designs or one of the many ex-military receivers that had come on to the surplus market. A large number of amateurs showed great ingenuity in the use of various items of military equipment to make up their sta- tion receiver, and sometimes their trans- mitter as well. There was a lot of ex-ser- vices expertise about and a considerable amount of technical discussion seemed to take place over the airwaves. Cobbling together all this readily obtainable gear was not entirely caused by the non-avail- ability of proprietary amateu...