What are the current best RX's?

[justron]

Now I have the scanner set up & working, I am thinking of getting back onto HF again. I used to run a number of different RX's including old valve radios like the AR-88. I also owned various SWL's like the Yaesu FRG-7700, the Kenwood 5000 & the Grundig Satellite & a lovely Sony, I cannot remember the model of.

I have found some online receivers & as good as some of these are. I want to run something here. What are the better HF RX radios available now? I am looking for something that I can run a decent wire antenna into without it overloading & maybe with an SWL ATU, DSP audio filter etc, into in the longer term & something smaller that I can inductance feed a MW loop with.

I am wanting to set up a serious SWL station, so I am discounting most of the cheap dongles.

[ch25]

Depends on budget. Vintage Racal, Icom IC-R8600 maybe?
Chris

[justron]

The Racal RA-17 is one radio I would LOVE to reacquire. They were a superb radio even when compared to radios of the 70's & early 80's.

The Icom R8600 looks interesting. But how does it perform on HF & MF compared to a HF specific radio? I used to own an Icom VHF/UHF RX . It covered something like 30 to 2000 MHZ, AM, FM & SSB & I loved it for satellite RX. But I am always wary of jacks of all bands, as they tend to be masters of no band. There used to be a horrible handheld scanner in the 90's that covered HF, VHF & UHF & it was not very good any where, but scanner users loved it, despite it's huge compromises.

Budget wise I was thinking maybe £1000 as a starting point. But performance is much more important than budget.

[dcwuk]

I have a JRC NRD 535 which is probably getting long in the tooth now but still a pleasure to use, a Malahit-DSP2 from Russia( not a clone) a superb radio in its own right and a RSPduo sdr which is a different ball game altogether. Each one has plusses and minuses I imagine, I am no expert I just like using them. SDR is probably the best available option nowadays. Others will disagree with that opinion and within me is still the nostalgia of plucking the signal out of the air with a Marconi B40 many moon ago.