Jack, I have never owned a S38B, but I did own a S40B and used it as a Novice on 80/40/15 meters CW. It was pretty terrible actually for CW, but a good 'first' receiver. On AM it was decent in many respects like you mention with your S38B.
You did well installing the polarized line cord, and planning to use an isolation transformer is also a good idea. That said, there are no 'incremental design enhancements' that will transform a S38B into a 75A4 or a SP-600. You can compensate somewhat by using your brain as a DSP filter to ignore audible QRN & QRM stuff blasting from your speaker. I did that with my S40B. My suggestion with receivers like this is to look at them for what it is, and be amazed that it does so well for how simple a receiver it is. Don't go away Jack. I for one like your stimulating the topics of discussion on this reflector. On occasion one of us crosses an invisible line, and it hits the fan. Don't believe for 1 minute that your the first to do that. Actually I think I just did it too! ;-) Regards, Jim JKO ----- Original Message ---- From: Jack Schmidling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Discussion of AM Radio in the Amateur Service <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, December 31, 2006 7:53:16 AM Subject: [AMRadio] Hallicrafters S38B I started my career as a ham with an S38B so yesterday I bought one to relive the good old days. It worked so well that I am going to set it up as my regular AM receiver. I was not too impressed with a wire hung around the room but when I put the dipole on it, it really came alive. After doing a little welding (learning about AC/DC radios) I got it hooked into the system so I can push to talk. I will get an isolation transformer but in the mean time, I put on a correctly polarized plug and put 100 pf caps in series with the antenna coax leads as an additional precaution. Anyway, the only serious problem with it is that the "BFO" does not work. A little research pointed out that it is not a BFO but just regenerative feedback that makes it squeal. The fix is to diddle with the position of a wire snaked between to pins of the detector tube socket. I was unable to establish a reasonable sounding heterodyne this way but when I clipped a very small cap to one of the pins and the switch, it worked very well at the expense of lots of sig strength. I can't seem to find any info on this issue and wonder if anyone has been there. I also note with glee that even though the BFO does not work properly, the sigs get vastly louder when in the CW mode. It is obviously operating in a regen mode but not what is needed for a BFO. Seems like there should be some way to control this business and improve the inherent sensitivity of the S38B but I think I am over my pay grade here. Any ideas? JACK K9ACT -- PHOTO OF THE WEEK: http://schmidling.com/pow.htm Astronomy, Beer, Cheese, Fiber,Gems, Sausage,Silver http://schmidling.com ______________________________________________________________ AMRadio mailing list List Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio Partner Website: http://www.amfone.net Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.html Post: mailto:[email protected] ______________________________________________________________ AMRadio mailing list List Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio Partner Website: http://www.amfone.net Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.html Post: mailto:[email protected]
