[Kevin Alfred Strom]

On 11/19/2011 1:40 AM, wrote:
[...]
Wow.

I remember listening to YOU-and Dr. Pierce-on the first regen I ever
built when I lived in Texas, about ten miles from the Louisiana line
on that shortwave station the NA bought time on. I did not always
agree with what you said but I damn sure backed your right to say it.
Pierce was really an intelligent person. I read the biography on him
by Robert Griffin, great read.



Yes, Dr. Pierce was and -- Dr. Griffin is -- a person of exemplary
quality. A privilege to know them, indeed.


Louisiana is a seriously warped state. Texas was screwed up in some
ways but Louisiana with its nightmarish hodgepodge of laws built on
four different legal systems and general laissez-les-bon-temps-rouler
attitude is Third World.

Regens are a pain in the ass. The best regen ever built was probably
the National SW-3, or for low frequency work the old Mackay Marine
set. Lindsay is full of **** when he says the homebrewer can better it
with moderate effort.And even so any mediocre superhet will outperform
it in some ways. My late forties Zenith console will separate stations
the SW-3 won't. But they are interesting to build-once-like the
crystal set, which can be run into a hi fi amp and give good local
station performance. My regen was the two tube set in the Romney book
which Lindsay also published. The SW-3 was far better-it would copy
ham CW on 80 and 40 consistently and even SSB with a good signal. The
homebrew was good for WWV and Radio Havana and that was it.



Even with more than four decades of radio under my belt, I still
haven't owned a regen -- though I've played with a few.

My next receiver will be an SDR. Eliminating all but one conversion
stage (since the SDR goes straight from RF to I/Q baseband) and
doing all the filtering and demodulation with perfect mathematical
accuracy in software not only gives you tremendous dynamic range and
filtering capability, but it makes the recovered audio almost
supernaturally clean-sounding.

Listening to a good SDR into a high-fidelity sound system for the
first time is like discovering that pillows had been strapped to
your speakers, and gravel had been stuck to your voice coil, for all
these years -- and finally removing them.


With best regards,


Kevin, WB4AIO.
--
http://nationalvanguard.org/
http://kevinalfredstrom.com/