Thinking Back To Our First HRO

Seeing these great receivers again on Channel Four's series on Station X reminds me to be a Radio Man in the Sixties meant getting an HRO.

Ours had UX Series valves leading up to a Type 42 in the output stage, its anode brought out to a screw teminal. A second terminal carried the HT.

Ignoring the manual, these were connected to the loudspeaker. Seemed very faint for such a highly regarded radio?

After the electric shock had thrown you across the room a few times, we learned an output transformer was needed to match output valve to speaker. We know that now...

You changed bands by changing the entire coilpack. Switch off B+ (the HT) before changing coils or the shock threw you across the room again. There were nine coilpacks in a wooden rack - very collectible now.

Opening the lid of an HRO took you into a world of wonder. The tuning knob ran a scale up to 500 but you never saw the numbers change. The transverse-mounted tuning gang with the signal circuits regimented in a straight line. The sinister glow of the S Meter, the scale discoloured by the passing years.

It was so quiet. It seemed the signal-to-noise ratio consisted only of signal. Working with the graph on the front of each coil-pack, you spun the dial to be, give or take parallax error, indifference to chart-reading, rounding up or down the scale setting, plus or minus 100Kc/s of where you wanted to be. Then you just listen around.

Bandspread coils were wonderful. Top Band covered in about thirty turns of that magnificent tuning drive. It took about six to get through Loran. Tuning AM was a challenge. The slow tuning rate and the broad flat-topped IF response resulted in the ballistically-challenged S Meter hardly showing a peak. Happy times!

These days they tell me a modern home hasn't the space to accommodate a military set. As I write this on a PC, this thought strikes me. It takes up about the same room as a HRO.