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Reviews For: Knight Kit R-55A

Category: Receivers: General Coverage

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Review Summary For : Knight Kit R-55A
Reviews: 2MSRP: $59.95
Description:
General Coverage Receiver
Product is not in production
More Info: http://
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0023
W4MEC Rating: 2017-12-06
From the days of iron men Time Owned: more than 12 months.
From the ham days of iron men and wooden ships, and the only filter you needed for CW was between your ears. This is a fun receiver to use, the single conversion and 1650KC IF freq make images a problem on the higher bands, and forget 6 meters with only a 6BE6 front end and no RF amp. Still OK for 160/80/40 CW and AM even today, and 20 for the truly gifted. Mine is paired with the T150, and also does a good job on CW and AM, until you get a ham that is a bit off the edge when it comes to freq. stability and being exactly on his freq. +/-.0001%. Guessing they took RIT out of the modern stuff, or so it seems.
W8AQ Rating: 2013-02-05
Early Novice Receiver Time Owned: more than 12 months.
At the age of 15, as my first receiver after getting my Novice license, this seemed liked the best receiver in the world! In reality, it was the best receiver I could build and afford! I still have it, have recapped it and use it in the shack every few days to tune in the shortwave or AM broadcast bands. I even still use it on occasion when I want to use the vintage gear. So it gets regular use almost half a century later.

OK, as a ham receiver, it was truly awful! I had it paired up with a used Heathkit DX-35 I got (also still in the shack). Luckily, being rockbound as a Novice, I had some sort of an idea where I was based on the xmtr output because the poor R-55A was pretty much only good enough to get in the ballpark. And with a complete lack of selectivity, I got very good at picking up the variation in the pitch of the CW station I was working. But having said all that, I worked hundreds of stations with it and it was a good enough experience to keep me interested in the hobby still today.

What more could I ask of a $59 kit purchased 45 years ago? Most of my purchases since then have done nowhere near as good a job of returning on the investment.

So for actual performance, the old Knight Kit probably rates a 1, or slightly better. For it's fun-factor, it's a solid 5. Hence, my average of 3.