"NOS" or "New, Old Stock" is the designation for most replacement tubes available now for these old beauties. How long will they be available? It's anyone's guess. Even today though, some audiophiles prefer the sound produced by tubes-- over that created by transistors and solid state chips.
My National NC-140 with matching NTS-3B speaker:
The general coverage National NC-140 was produced in 1962 and 1963. Featuring a "cosmic blue" case that tilted up on a "flip foot", it was certainly something new and different. I bought one new in 1963 and enjoyed many hours of shortwave listening, including the monitoring of foreign telephone calls to South America and other places. Little did people know that, if they called a friend in Lima, Peru, the whole world could listen in on the conversation. In the late 60s, I sold my receiver to a new ham, Randy, WN5TSM, now a Silent Key. He used it with an Eico 720 transmitter.
When I found this NC-140 in really good condition and with the speaker, for $200, I made the purchase from WC8I. Audio from shortwave broadcast stations is very good! Here's a look inside:
My Hallicrafters SX-122 with matching R-48A speaker:
The SX-122 is built like a battleship, and was sold from 1962 through 1964. Eleven tubes are easily accessed from above. The receiver covers .54 - 1.6 Mhz of the standard broadcast band, and then 1.75 to 34 Mhz for general coverage. The "X" denotes the crystal filter that was included in the higher end Hallicrafters sets. One especially good feature is the use thin steel cable (instead of the usual limited-life string) to rotate the dial mechanism. My set also has the optional crystal calibrator, which uses a 6AU6 tube. The selectivity options are 0.5 for CW reception in crowded-band conditions, 2.5 KC for SSB, and 5 KC for excellent fidelity for AM broadcasts. Here is how it looks inside, with the top cover removed:
My Heathkit DX-60B transmitter:
Back in the Novice License days, there was a demand for transmitters that would run 75 watts input (the legal Novice limit), and Heathkit answered with this unit.
The DX-60 series was sold, in kit form, from 1967 until 1976. Original price was $124.95. It does either CW or controlled carrier screen modulation. The crystal sockets are on the chassis at the rear, not very convenient. But otherwise, it's a nice little rig, built around a single 6146 final.
By the way, there are still a lot of stations broadcasting on shortwave, even though some have cut back on operations. (You will have to tune around the unprofessional religious broadcasters-- they mostly just broadcast recordings sent in by Rev. Big Wallet, Brother Bigot and the like.) One nice thing now is that foreign broadcasters are happy to accept e-mailed reception reports, and most of them will still send you a nice QSL card. This is the front and back of one I recently received from The Voice of Russia:
Quite unlike the Radio Moscow of years past, VOR presents very professional and polished studio productions of history, music and interviews-- while still explaining their side of world politics.
CLICK HERE for an excellent website about radios that glow in the dark! Especially interesting are Jim's Hallicrafters and Boat Anchor pages, linked on the left of his page!
