11 Aug 2017

Eddystone receivers

When I first entered the hobby in the early 1960s, many here in the UK aspired to Eddystone receivers, made in Birmingham, UK. They were beautifully made with velvet touch drives.

I wanted an 840C, but never had one. When I started work a friend had a dad who worked for Eddystone. I was lucky enough to get an EC10 in the early 1970s. These were the first transistorised  receivers that they made. They sold for £48 when they first came out. 10m bandspread was appalling and in all honesty, by modern standards, they were not very good. I think the IF was very low. They still had lovely mechanical construction and velvet smooth drives, but the receivers were really average.

For quite a while I used mine on the lower HF bands and as a tuneable IF for VHF and UHF RX converters. As an IF they were fine.

They used germanium transistors and they occasionally turn up on eBay and similar. These days, I would not bother apart from nostalgia.

See https://sites.google.com/site/g3xbmqrp3/hf/ec10 .

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