Ray Jefferson

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ridgescan

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I got hold of an old Ray Jefferson direction finding portable. Its bands are AM, FM, LW and CB. Did folks actually use these radios to find land from a boat-or go on "fox hunts"? That rotating antenna on top actually has coordinates and a plotting window. Interesting radio I have never seen in my life, where did they sell these things? Marine shops?
 

zz0468

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Did folks actually use these radios to find land from a boat-or go on "fox hunts"?

Yep! That was considered a "serious" piece of navigation equipment. People actually used them to find LF beacons and AM Broadcast stations. If you knew how to properly use them, they were quite capable of of giving accurate bearings.

That rotating antenna on top actually has coordinates and a plotting window. Interesting radio I have never seen in my life, where did they sell these things? Marine shops?

Isn't that antenna a hoot!?

They were sold at marine electronic stores and marine hardware stores.
 

techsender

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That Ray Jeff DF receiver was pretty cool - back in the day there were tons of low frequency (200 to 450 khz) beacons at the entrances to harbors and at some lighthouses. Those got decommissioned years ago. That DF receiver could help a lost mariner figure out where the harbor entrance was. Does it work ?
 

zz0468

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That Ray Jeff DF receiver was pretty cool - back in the day there were tons of low frequency (200 to 450 khz) beacons at the entrances to harbors and at some lighthouses. Those got decommissioned years ago. That DF receiver could help a lost mariner figure out where the harbor entrance was. Does it work ?

Many of the lf beacons used for marine navigation are still in use. One of my radio related activities is LF beacon DX'ing, and there are still tons of them out there.

Does it work? The short answer is yes.
 

ridgescan

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That Ray Jeff DF receiver was pretty cool - back in the day there were tons of low frequency (200 to 450 khz) beacons at the entrances to harbors and at some lighthouses. Those got decommissioned years ago. That DF receiver could help a lost mariner figure out where the harbor entrance was. Does it work ?
If you are asking about this radio-yes it works perfectly-later tonight when MW distant stations and LW beacons start coming in better I will shoot a video of it direction-finding:)
 

AF6IM

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Ray Jeff RDF

Those manual DFs like the Ray Jeff were hard to use in a rolling pitching and yawing boat. ADFs were far more useful but expensive in the 1960s. I converted a WW 2 surplus ARN 7 Radio Compass (ADF) for marine use in the 60s and it worked great. It was also a superb BCB DX rcvr, having 2 RF stages.

Here is a link to a site documenting my experiences with DFs on commercial fishing boats back in the day.

https://sites.google.com/site/fusephoto4/mark-meltzer-af6im-at-the-helm-fv-josie-m

Many newbies see those Ray Jeffs and similar RDFs on eBay with a CB band and bid them up assuming they can DF on CB. All the ones I saw just DFd on 200-3000 KHz or so and the CB (and VHF) band was for rcv only, no DF functionality.

73,
Mark
 
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