bcdlr wrote:
Could I really get by with a newer digital dial SW receiver? I thought
they were just too wide open on the front end side to be any good at
all.

Where are you at, Cental Europe? If so, then the front end is too wide
open.

If the middle of the US, then there's not much problem. If it becomes a
problem, just put an attenuator in front.

The user interface on the new digital dial SW receivers is univerally
sucky. They do awfully bad at "tuning around the band looking for a
QSO", they are really built around the concept that someone will want
to listen to Radio Netherlands at 15735kc and just punch in that number
and expect to find it. There might be a tuning dial but it feels more
like you're dialing through channels than tuning up and down the bands.
The filters are only middlin' for AM, and will be "too wide" for SSB or
CW on the ham bands if things are at all crowded. But contrasted with a
$250 receiver from the 1960's they have a lot of nice things that were
purely pie-in-the-sky back then!

On the receiver I've put messages on eHam and QRZ for a 'receiver
wanted' - I have some P4 class desktop machines I could trade, but I
haven't gotten any nibbles at all yet. I've been hesitant to put the
same message on rec.radio.swap due to the volume of traffic there.

Lots of stuff goes through E-bay. Including the general coverage
receivers you seem to desire, for example I got a WJ-8716 (something
that was almost entirely out of the reach of a non-millionaire ham in
the 70's or 80's) at a tiny tiny fraction of what they originally sell
for. Still not "cheap".

If you like CW, I have recently become very enamored of the Heathkit
HW-16. There's a lot to be said for simple single-mode
limited-bandwidth receivers (or in the case of the HW-12 transceivers).
Break-in on the HW-16 with a couple mods is seamless, it's so good that
I FEEL like I can hear even when I have the key down.

Spring is coming and there will probably be some hamfests near you.
Hamfests tend to be better than say 10 or 15 years ago, when they were
all computer junk. Even if you don't buy, you get to see and usually
touch the stuff.

Tim.