"Sam Byrams" wrote in message
om

I would rather have a good well-driven variable cap or a PTO than an
analog varactor arrangement.

It resonates well emotionally. My best tuner is a Pioneer TX 9100 which has
a real tuning cap.

Varactors were used with a geared pot to
produce a DC voltage that swung the LO, I think the GE Superadio III
(sic) still does, but it's not that stable.

Today, they're almost all driven by digital circuitry.

The old Collins and Racal HF receivers were very stable and pretty
accurate, and even at VHF
this can work well. HP used the tuned cavity LO in its classic 8640B
generator-doesn't everyone own one?-and this works even slicker. Even
though frequency readout is with a counter, the generator is fully
analog and, once warmed up, very stable. And has-like many analog
receivers-negligible phase noise. No PLLs in the signal path!

Is that supposed to be the good news or the bad news?

Years ago someone actually showed off a FM tuner-actually a full
general purpose comm grade receiver from 30 to 250 or so MHz-with the
tuned cavity out of a surplus 8640 for variable tuning, an OCXO, and
the spectrum/scope out of a Motorola or HP service monitor. Beats hell
out of that 6E5 on the Magnum Dynalab-apparently a consumer clock
radio front end in an expensive milled anodized case-doesn't it?

Frankly, I don't see a lot of future in perfectionist analog FM receivers.