RadioBanter - View Single Post - Remember the Sony ICF-68000W?

BDK[_3_] · August 12th 07, 08:00 PM posted to rec.radio.shortwave

In article ,
says...
The 6800 Orange model isn't a bad receiver. It would have been nice if they
would have had more selectivity at the 1st I.F. If it wasn't so hard to work
on, I would probably put a crystal filter in that area, but not in this
century.
It is not quite my worst receiver..........my Magnavox D-2999 is the worst,
with all of its birdies on the MW band. I got stuck with it as part of a
trade with the McKay Dymek Dr-22C that I picked up in the same deal.
The Dymek is a pretty good receiver; it uses a Mini-Circuits SRA-3H mixer
as the 1st mixer. This mixer is rated down to 40kHz, but unfortunately, the
phase noise from the synthesizer limits the usable sensitivity below 100kHz.
They should have used a post mixer amplifier instead of putting the RF
amplifier ahead of the 1st mixer. It could be that the low-pass and
high-pass filters in the preselector have such high insertion loss that they
needed to have that RF amp just to make up for the insertion loss.
I remember the DR-33..............they decided to "roll their own" with the
1st mixer on this unit. Sensitivity wasn't as good as the DR-22 receivers,
at least with the unit that I played with. I ended up replacing that mixer
with a TFM-1H and both sensitivity and IMD performance improved quite a bit.

Pete

A friend bought a D-2999 at a hamfest, it was in new condition about 10
years old or so, and it went for a really cheap price. He kept it for a
while, but was very unhappy with it in general, except the audio was
pretty decent.

Ny friend's dad had an amazing collection of receivers, from the super
common Yaesu FRG's, to some German and Asian ones I have never seen
except for pics. I sure wish I could have grabbed a couple of them when
he died, and my friend sold most of them and his insanely huge
collection of parts. He had a mint Hammarlund HQ-180A that I wanted so
damn bad, but my tranny blew up on my truck and my dog was going in for
surgery, so I had to pass on all of them. He had some really great stuff
that I would really love to have now.

BDK

"BDK" wrote in message
...
In article ,
says...
Yours must have been badly out of alignment. Properly set up, it's one
of
the most sensitive as well as one of the quietest radios you'll ever have
the pleasure of using. It didn't get the reputation it did for nothing.

And some of us love the way it looks.

Well, it was brand new, about two days out of the box, and worked
exactly (As far as I could tell) like the one they had at Universal
Radio. The guy who bought the 6800W sold it when the 6800 Orange fever
kicked in for a small profit.

IMO, it got it's reputaion because at the time it was released, there
were few halfway decent new under $1000 receivers that were available
worldwide, and the Sony name. A name that has sadly been tarnished the
last few years. Deservedly so, IMO.

If you liked it, great. There are tons of receivers that I would have,
and still would pick over one, unless it was super cheap.

I think a lot of people like me think it's ugly because the front panel
is very "uniquely" laid out. Kind of like, "Put this knob here, and that
dial there...whoops, we forgot to put those buttons in! Oh crap, where
are we gonna put that other knob?"

BDK

"BDK" wrote in message
...
In article . com,
says...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLvYfXh_ZH0

I really wanted one after reading all the stuff written about it when I
first got bit by the higher end SW bug, it really sounded great. I had
nothing even approaching it though, so it would have been a major step
up, equipment wise.

But I was severely disappointed in it when I actually used one the
first
time, then even more so a few minutes later when I played with a JRC
NRD-515. At that moment, every desire I had for a 6800 "Orange" was
dead. It took me almost two years before I bought my NRD-525, and
another year after that before I finally got my NRD-515. I still have
it, but the 525 has been replaced with a much later, improved one.

On top of it not being all that great of a receiver, the 6800 is pretty
damn ugly.

Nice video though. Miles ahead of the NRD-535 ones.

BDK