Need a fresh look at troubled radio? Contact me, perhaps we can work it out together. Use the CONTACT page on this site

HALLICRAFTERS, HAM RADIO, & WDØGOF

I was working for Wilcox Avionics in the 60’s & 70’s when Hallicrafters became part of Northrop/Wilcox. I was so taken by the Hallicrafters gear that I went, took the test and got my call sign. I opened a hobby business on a limited scale repairing Hallicrafters SR series and the FPM 300radios. I left Wilcox in 79 and due to business travel requirements I became a dormant ham. On a very limited scale I continued servicing radios and kept the call sign active. In ’95 I retired (at 54) and spent 15 years RV’ing the USA. I became an active ham again. I had a bunch of old “H” stuff around. I sold all the old tube junk. This funded the purchase of top of the line MODERN equipment. I still have nightmares over that act of stupidity. It only took me a year to realize, that was a mistake. I sold all the Taiwan and Japanese gear and started re-collecting Hallicrafters SR series “tech units” and” parts units”. To date I have not purchased a single working rig although I have bought several “it worked fine the last time I used it ” rigs. I reopened a repair shop with a very narrow product spread. I only repaired Hallicrafters HT and SR series rigs. I have a complete collection of the full production SR series HF transceivers in operation in the shack. There are 7 full production rigs in this series and I have restored many of each from the 100watt SR-150 to the 1000watt SR-2000. In 2015 I closed my repair shop, following quad bypass surgery. In the interim I have repaired and sold off all the shelfed rigs I had. I have to admit that I enjoy repair and restoration more than operation. Of the series, my favorites are the SR-500 and the SR-2000. The 500 has only two “bells or whistles” xtal cal and RIT so it is truly nostalgic operation. It is quick to tune, very stable (now) and enough punch to get through the noise. I don’t contest and if I ever make a DX contact, well that’s nice. I’ll have to admit that the 500 is not a CW rig, no narrow filter, no VOX (unless you add the HA16 VOX unit) and no break-in keying. But then I have a hearing condition that runs the dots and dashes together at about 9 wpm so that makes me a nuisance on cw. I must admit the SR-2000 is my most favored rig. By modern standards it would be considered a very basic rig. But, in the 60’s it was the Cadillac of HF transceivers. It was the only desktop KW transceiver on the market. It is the finest transceiver, best engineered product Hallicrafters ever produced.

In December of 2018 I developed this website. Here I can share my passions as well as all the Hallicrafters knowledge and documents I have accumulated over the years.