Beautiful radios you guys have. Digging the photo of the Drake R-4 and the FT-101's.
RE: the FRG-7:
Very cool radio. Haven't seen a close up photo of the Sears model before. I notice that the bandswitch and mode knobs are different than those on a stock Yaesu FRG-7.
I've had an FRG-7, so here are some tips, maybe you already figured out most of it, though....
FRG-7's are excellent radios for MW DX, and SW listening / DXing. Bandwidth is a hair wide for some SW DX, it depends on how crowded the bands are, and over the past couple years (at least here in the PNW where I live) the bands aren't that crowded... so bandwidth may not be an issue. Excellent sound -- either through the speaker or headphones -- makes DXing a pleasurable experience.
Just remember that when the red LED is off, the Mhz dial is correctly tuned. And you will also notice that when the Mhz dial is a little to one side or the other it weakens reception a bit, so zero it in for best performance.
As you probably have already noticed, the DX / Local on the Attenuator is backwards -- the 'DX' setting actually kicks in the first stage of the attenuator. They labelled it that way on all the FRG-7's at the factory. One of it's labelling 'quirks'. I leave mine in the center position. Never had to attenuate signals, except very rarely on sideband.
The FRG-7 is good for monitoring the ham bands, but the wider selectivity can make strong adjacent stations cover weaker ones. It still can be done, though. I used to use it exclusively for monitoring the ham bands, just lived with some of the QRM. When conditions are good and there's low noise, listening to the ham bands with a set of headphones is a pleasurable experience.
The ANL is fair -- as you probably have noticed, it doesn't really reduce noise much. I upped the capacitance on mine, which improves the noise limiting a little bit (also cuts some of the highs), It makes it more useful, but it's definitely no where near a noise blanker.
There are numerous modifications that can be done. I only have done the ANL mod (adding a capacitor) and I also did a 'mod' where you disconnect a resistor that's across one of the segments of the bandswitch -- I think it's across preselector bands A & B -- I don't quite remember, and don't have the schematic handy. Some guys wire back-to-back diodes inside the radio, near the antenna input, to protect the RF amp FET from static damage. I clipped a couple into the antenna terminals on the back of the radio -- does the same thing.
