Yeah, I got mine at a garage sale about 30 years ago. I had two maritime HF frequencies in memory, 12 and 13 Mhz. I had an approximately 80 foot wire antenna and would switch back and forth between the two, listening to ship-to-shore telephone calls and also, USCG HF maritime channels and transatlantic HF SSB airline traffic. Lotsa fun and great sensitivity as well as selectivity.
DX-440 won't tune with knob. Direct entry only
- Thread starter bbo14
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mmckenna
I ♥ Ø
I did the anti-chuff mod on mine also, and it didn't jump around like that until years later.
Mine recently started doing it again, and I'm pretty sure it's just dirty, mine sits in the garage and gets pretty dusty. I need to clean it.
There's a fine tuning mod also that I did to mine, lets you use the BFO pitch knob without the switch set to SSB to act as a fine tune function. Kind of useful.
This one is my second. First one I bought myself from Radio Shack in my teens with money from a first job. Used the heck out of that radio, even took it on a cruise ship once and it did very well.
Got a case of the stupids and sold it at a ham fest. Regretted that for years. I had a co-worker that had two of them. He took pity on me and gave me his second one, which was the Sangean model.
For the price, and at the time, these were excellent radios with a lot of good features. I could certainly do better now, but with a good antenna mine has done everything I've asked it to. Most of the time it's doing AM Broadcast DX, and it does that well.
Mine recently started doing it again, and I'm pretty sure it's just dirty, mine sits in the garage and gets pretty dusty. I need to clean it.
There's a fine tuning mod also that I did to mine, lets you use the BFO pitch knob without the switch set to SSB to act as a fine tune function. Kind of useful.
This one is my second. First one I bought myself from Radio Shack in my teens with money from a first job. Used the heck out of that radio, even took it on a cruise ship once and it did very well.
Got a case of the stupids and sold it at a ham fest. Regretted that for years. I had a co-worker that had two of them. He took pity on me and gave me his second one, which was the Sangean model.
For the price, and at the time, these were excellent radios with a lot of good features. I could certainly do better now, but with a good antenna mine has done everything I've asked it to. Most of the time it's doing AM Broadcast DX, and it does that well.
Agreed. Great radios. When I upgraded to a Drake R8, I thought it would be night and day with the DX-440, considering the Drake cost four times as much. Well, it wasn't that dramatic of a difference. Ultimately, the Drake was better at rejecting adjacent channel interference and digging out really weak signals. On the same antenna, the DX-440 seemed to hear most of the things the Drake could hear. The DX-440 does very well on AM Broadcast DX, and the Drake does exceptionally well there.
Where did you finds the fine tuning mod? I could use that too. This my first and so far only DX440. If I find another one in good condition, I'll consider buying it. I have a Grundig Yacht Boy SSB model and a Grunding SD350L. The 350 has the typical hysteresis in the tuning. I have reduced that somewhat but it is totally characteristic of the breed.
mmckenna
I ♥ Ø
Wish I could remember, but it was one of the websites with mods listed. It essentially involved bridging solder across two of the BFO switch pins, pretty easy to do. Don't ask me which pins, it was probably 10 years ago.
At the time I received my DX-440 (1988) the Sony ICF-2010 was the portable to get. It received very high marks from reviewers, such as Larry Magne in Passport to Worldband Radio. It still commands a high price for good examples. Just another one to keep an eye out for.
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