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Reviews For: Hallicrafters S-38

Category: Receivers: General Coverage

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Review Summary For : Hallicrafters S-38
Reviews: 22MSRP: $39.95
Description:
Six tube general coverage receiver.
Product is not in production
More Info: http://
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00223.8
W6LBV Rating: 2006-04-10
Didn't work well then, and probably still doesn't Time Owned: more than 12 months.
It was almost fifty years ago (in 1959), and I was working through the usual novice preparation conundrum: I was a college student then receiving a lunch-time introduction to Amateur Radio conducted by a fellow student who was already a ham, I had a full course load to handle in addition to a strong desire to receive my license and to start operating, and I had very little spare cash. Fifty dollars of (almost) non-existent funds went to buy an E.F. Johnson Adventurer kit that, post construction, would be my novice transmitter. My h.f. antenna would be a 40 meter folded dipole made from TV twin lead already on hand. But what to do for a receiver?

I put out the word around the college campus, and almost instantly I was contacted by a grad student who had an S-38 for sale. The radio didn't actually play, so I talked him into taking $5 for it. I put in a new rectifier tube and soldered in a new line cord (my first ham repair!), and the S-38 took off. I set up the station and began copying 40 meter CW while waiting for my ticket to arrive.

And copy CW I did! Often up to fourteen stations simultaneously. But if a very strong CW signal was present it blocked the front end of the receiver and then I had "single signal" CW. Even to a newbie, the S-38 was clearly not intended to be a CW receiver, its onboard BFO notwithstanding. The fixed i.f. selectivity was about 8 kHz bandwidth. Sensitivity was OK on 40 meters, low on 15, and probably non-existent on 10. It did receive the BBC, Radio Havana, and Voice of America, so it wasn't a total loss.

As a novice I actually completed few CW QSOs; I generally lost the contact in the eternal QRM. There was one afternoon, however, when a WA2 broke through from New Jersey on 15 meters (with a strong, blocking signal), and I made my first transcontinental QSO. I soon finished with both my novice work and the receiver, and sold it shortly afterwards. Now I realize that I should have bought a better novice receiver from the start.

There's no reason now to own one of these, save for populating a museum. Much better post-World War II all-tube boat anchors are still around, many of which can actually be used on the ham bands.
PY3KT Rating: 2004-11-26
Superb hot tail Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Hallicrafters S-38 is a very simple heterodine receiver, but work very fine. A reliable hot tail (transformerless) radio. Mine was restored and fully functional like a 1946 model.