SAQ Receiver Gallery

[Juergen Brustat]

Would you dare driving an old-timer ralley with a modern Formula-1 racing car ?
Certainly not !
Receiving an old-time transmitter with a soundcard and a PC or an SDR
is as well improper style or even bad taste, but in no way a remarkable achievement.
Everybody can do so !
In my eyes the only proper way to receive SAQ is using an old-time receiver,
the older the better. Not necessarily an original receiver of the twenties
– who is lucky to own one ? – but any non-digital hardware receiver
– original or reconstructed, industrial or home-built – might be ok.

To encourage listeners and demonstrate what can be done,
I recommend installing an SAQ RECEIVER GALLERY in this forum,
where every successful listener may describe his equipment,
preferably with a photo or perhaps schematic diagram.
No.1 will certainly be Jim Moritz with his ingenious electromechanical receiver,
but I am convinced there will be many other units
from the twenties to nowadays.

Topic

[rich.g.williams]

“Would you dare driving an old-timer ralley with a modern Formula-1 racing car ? Certainly not !
Receiving an old-time transmitter with a soundcard and a PC or an SDR is as well improper style or even bad taste, but in no way a remarkable achievement.
Everybody can do so !”

This is a very unfair comment I say this for the following reasons:

– The original Kungsbacka Receiver Station, it is noted that the Receiver antenna “consisted of two copper wires set up on 9 m tall telephone poles along a stretch of about 13.4 km, over Kungsbackaån and southeast out through Hanhals and Fjärås parishes to Skärsjön on the south side of Lygnern” So how many of us have access to such a 13.4 km length antenna.

– I want to receive SAQ transmission in Cardiff Wales UK and my garden allows for a 25 metre wire antenna so must use “every trick in the book” to receive SAQ with certainty at good signal strength.
– To build a simple tuned receiver modern electronics is easiest and to avoid need for hardware BFO etc its easy to record the 17200 Hz carrier directly using a Laptop PC (at 48 k samples/sec) and use software to detect the Morse code.

My belief is that the SAQ transmission propagates around the globe so for people trying to receive in the opposite hemisphere use of modern electronics and software processing is essential.

Also to be perfectly honest I have looked at some of the old receiver designs and to me they look very bloated, over complicated, difficult to understand and difficult to build – they do not follow the most important designers commandment which is “keep it simple”

I agree that existing receivers built originally should be looked after and kept safe but I do not agree that people should be encouraged to rebuild those old designs in the 21st Century.

[Tonny]

Old post, but still:

https://www.verhoef.se/index.php?menu=myphscr/album.php&name=album/hobby/saq

just finished, ready for upcoming transmission

[Martin Mehlhose]

actually I am restorating this great old Telefunken E108Lw4

http://www.wellenkino.de/e108/1.jpg

http://www.wellenkino.de/e108/11.jpg

http://www.wellenkino.de/e108/13.jpg

the first band of this very glowing radio is 10 to 31kHz.

greetings from germany
Martin

[F6AGR]

Hi Jürgen

This has been done a long time ago by M0BMU.
Have a look on http://www.wireless.org.uk/mechrx.htm

Cheers

Jean-Louis F6AGR

[Petr, OK1RP]

Hi all,
where is the gallery please?
73 – Petr, OK1RP

[Juergen Brustat DL2JMB]

Maybe I was a bit narrow-minded in limiting the presentation in the SAQ RECEIVER GALLERY
to hardware receivers. The receiver is only part of the equipment and
antenna, recorder, any evaluation gear, even the power supply, they all are important too.
Anybody who has a new idea in software equipment should be equally welcome.
Even having had no reception might be interesting in order to teach others how to do it better.

I am convinced that within a very short time there will be many, many contributions to the gallery
from all over the world. I myself own about a dozen sets usable for SAQ reception,
ranging from 27 tube LF receiver Collins R-389 over level meters to home-built regens.
Each time SAQ is active, I try another equipment and I would like to describe them all with features,
advantages and disadvantages.
So, friends of SAQ, wherever you may be, follow me ! DL2JMB Juergen Brustat

[Author]

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