A very, very, very long time ago, when I had an appetite for such things, I bought a scanner. You have to bear in mind that as a nipper I played with electronics as a hobby from the age of 9 and later, when I was ejected from the family home, I went on to play with electronics professionally. Indeed, I used to play with bits of Racal kit such as this:
So when the all frequency receiver/scanner popped up into my field of vision, I jumped at it, bought it, put in a safe place and promptly forgot about it for a good number of years.
I recently discovered/rediscovered it, in a box of electronic stuff in the garage. I blew the dust off it, connected it to the mains, tuned it in to the local airport approach and was pleasantly surprised that it seems to work nicely. But there’s a thing. Although it’s got an impressive frequency range (500KHz to 1300MHz [1.3GHz]) with no gaps, it doesn’t have a BFO and if I’m keenly interested in one aspect of radio, it’s SSB operations on HF. So yes, a BFO would be most handy.
The device is a Trident TR1200 which (unsurprisingly) is no longer made. It was also produced in various rebadged guises as an AOR AR2000 and/or a Camnis HSC-010.
I really should learn how to use it properly, regardless of the lack of BFOability.
Ooh, nice toy!
You might be able to add a BFO fairly easily. Simple enough circuit.
It’s just a case of finding the IF takeoff inside the radio.
Google might be able to help.
Hmm. Thanks for that. If I get bored I might well consider this. There’s a tremendous amount of Russ HF BearNet activity at the moment. I’ve caught some of it, but when they use SSB I’m at a technical disadvantage, obviously.