Hammarlund HQ-170

The receiver is a Hammarlund HQ-170 from about 1958. This was a high-end receiver in it's day, and it is still very pleasant to use. It is ham-band only, 160 - 6 meters, triple-conversion, with the final IF at 60 khz. The 60 khz if strip has an unusual design with a string of conventional IF transformers to achieve 500 hz selectivity for CW. For wider bandwidths, the transformers are progressively stagger-tuned by switching in small capacitances. Bandwiths from 500 hz to 3 khz are available, spanning lower, upper, or both sides of zero beat. This IF design is also used in the HQ-180, which is a great general coverage version of the receiver. On the upper bands the main tuning gets a bit fast, but the vernier tuning, on the right, is really nice and solves that problem. The filtering is also nice.

Johnson Viking Navigator

This is the radio that I longed for the most as a teenager. The Navigator is a CW-only transmitter that is a scaled-down version of the Johnson Ranger, which was a popular AM / CW transmitter. Despite it's small size, it is heavily built in the Johnson traditon. With only about 450 volts on the plate of a 6146, it runs 40 watts input, and puts out about 25 watts. For some reason, Johnson used an inexpensive and totally un-damped meter, which bounces around enough to be annoying. By modern standards, the rig is a bit drifty and slightly chirpy on the upper bands (the oscillator is keyed).

The radio did not sell well, as its more powerful big brother, the Ranger, did not cost much more. Unfortunately, many of the few remaining units have non-stadard replacement meters (this one has the original).

Johnson Keys

Here is a Johnson / SpeedX bug and a Johnson / SpeedX straignt key. The bug is loaded up with two modern extra-large Vibroplex weights which brings it's speed down to about 17 wpm.

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