Ah, yeah, the HRO60.... That guy had been watching that radio sitting in a store room for about 10 years collecting dust. He kept trying to get someone to surplus it so he could buy it. That day I saw it dumped in the e-waste bin was just pure luck. I couldn't hang onto that radio knowing he'd been wanting it so bad. When he was a kid, he wanted one of those really bad, but could never afford it. He's got 20 acres up in the Sierra foothills in a very rural area, so he's got the antenna to do it justice. I think I damn near made him cry when I showed him what I had in the back of the truck. Best part is that it's all original and all the coil drawers have serial numbers that match the receiver itself. He's got a bunch of old transoceanics that he's rebuilt also, an old AM broadcast transmitter that he's retuned to work on 160 meters and a bunch of other cool stuff. He's always offering me old radios, but I just don't have the time or space to do it right. Some day......
I do have an AOR-2300 receiver sitting on one of the higher rooftops at work with the IP interface that lets me use it remotely. I was trying to use it today on some low frequency stuff, but wasn't having any luck. I didn't even think about a solar storm being the issue, but now it sort of makes sense. The PD and Fire repeaters up there will overload the front end, but this was continuous. There are some variable frequency motor drives on the far end of the roof for HVAC systems, and I can usually hear the static when one of them kicks on, but this wasn't it. I'll have to try again once things have cleared up. With an end fed wire antenna, and connected to the building ground, I can do pretty good. Not an RF quiet site by any stretch of the imagination, but it's up about 1000 feet above Monterey bay and I can pull in some pretty good stuff on it. Of course it's purely for, ah, testing use, yeah that's it, testing, and not a toy for me to play with after hours.......
however, the single most copyable broacaster almost 24/7 is R. Australia. I don't know what or how they do it but they're always well heard here in SFO. I would LOVE to go there on a vacation and get a tour of their Shepparton facilities. I'd wear the camera out
