A Crummy Commercial

 The Sony 2010 shortwave receiver is one of my favorite radios.  It is synthesized, has memories, no menus, covers shortwave, air band and FM, has symchronous detection as well as a BFO for SSB and it has timers.  I blogged a little about it here: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/05/accessorizing-sony-2010-receiver.html One problem mentioned in that post was the dreaded deafness on AM and shortwave due to the front end JFET, Q303, being damaged by static.  Here is a zoom into the Sony 2010 schematic: Q303 is at the lower center right Sony protected the built-in whip with diodes but the external antenna does not have diodes.  It's easy to add diodes to the included antenna assembly: a zoom into the diodes, back to back 1n4148 soldered from the hot lead to ground: Q303 is identified on the schematic as a 2SK-152-1, a Sony part.  When my Sony 2010 was damaged a couple of decades ago I was still able to buy these from a reputable place online.  I *think* t...

 I just dusted off (literally) the Sony 2010 a beauty from the 20th century    the idea is to use it for listening to code practice.  This was a portable shortwave receiver by Sony in the late 20th century.  It covered 150 kHz to 30 MHz, FM and air band, was synthesized, had memories, 4 timers, a very nice machine. Of course it had faults.  The JFET preamp wasn't protected when an external antenna was used so most of them got damaged resulting in a deaf radio.  There was a recording output but it was mic level not line level so that could be inconvenient.  The LED backlight for the LCD display is kinda weak.  The synthesizer has chunky 100 Hz steps but still has a lot of "chuffing" as the frequency is varied.  The internal clock/timer is not super accurate, losing enough time that the radio is tuned to WWV regularly to reset the time. But these are all quibbles for a fine design, well made.  There aren't any menus, everything is han...