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Reviews For: Heathkit HR-10B

Category: Receivers: Amateur Radio

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Review Summary For : Heathkit HR-10B
Reviews: 31MSRP: 89.95
Description:
The Heathkit Model HR-10B Basic Amateur Band Receiver is designed for use as a high-performance economical station receiver. Frequency coverage of the Receiver includes the amateur bands, 80 through 10 meters, only. Each band is separately calibrated on a large easy-to-read slide-rule dial. The dial is illuminated and provides approximately 6 inches of bandspread for each band.

The receiver features a signal strength "S" meter, a front panel dial calibration control that operates in conjunction with the 100 kc crystal calibrator provisions (optional), a tuned RF amplifier stage, a crystal filter (2 pole), and an automatic noise limiter circuit.
Product is not in production
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# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00312.9
W0YN Rating: 2008-06-25
Frustrating Time Owned: more than 12 months.
At age 15 as a Novice my Dad and I (almost entirely my Dad, as I watched) built an HR-10B as my station receiver. In the Summer of 1965 the kit as I recall was $69.95, a fair sum of money at the time. I remember the frustrations of using this receiver. In those days, I thought it was ok but the receiver was as deaf as a fence post. Most of my contacts were on 40 meters with an occasional DX a State or two away. I remember listening and trying to copy a faint signal without success with the RF gain and volume turned up full blast without success. When I upgraded to General, I put up a tower and beam but the receiver performance didn't improve. I remember a friend telling me how 15 and 10 meters were open. (He had a Drake 2-B) Not with the HR-10B. I wanted to work 20 meter DX with this receiver. Forget it. You can't work them if you don't hear them. You won't hear them with this receiver. I even think the claimed 1uv sensitivity of the receiver is suspect. I considered buying an outboard pre-amp for the receiver but back then couldn't afford it.I really hated the 1960's and this receiver certainly contributed to that. If only eHam reviews would have existed back then Heathkit wouldn't have sold very many of these. A definite dog with fleas.
W4FID Rating: 2008-06-25
not the answer Time Owned: N.A.
My first station in 1961 was a DX-60 (likely the first one ever sold) and early on I got a SX-99. Recently I had a chance to recreate my early years with a DX-60. SX-99s are pretty hard to find and the HR-10 is not realy a receiver. So I got a 2B -- the receiver I dreamed about (lusted for?) but had no chance of affording at the time. It's still a great CW ststion even by today's standards.

It's ironic that the DX-60 is one of the great classics. The matching VFO that came along a little later is OK -- was good by the standards of the day. But the HR-10 never was any good -- it balanced the scale with the DX-60 being so great and the "matching" receiver being so poor. How they sold any is a mystery when there were SX-99s, numerous Hammerland and National models, and others on the used market in that price range that were far better. Matching is nice to look at -- but didn't translate into being nice to work Qs with.
WB0SND Rating: 2008-06-24
Awful! Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
When I was 14 I built an HR-10B along with the DX-60B and HG-10B. Well, I didn't know there was any better. Actually, I should have rated it higher. I attribute my CW skills to the HR-10B. That is because at any given dial setting you could hear 5 signals at once. I became very proficent at copying the signal I was working and ignoring the ones I wasn't. Who needs a CW filter!!! (I didn't know what they were then, either).
KG9HV Rating: 2007-02-11
Find something else Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I bought a HR-10B a couple years ago. It had a
couple caps blown out and I repaired it. It's
true about being "deaf as a post" on 15m and 10M.
It was a nice piece of nostalgia and a nice
conversation piece, but as a receiver I would
find something else. I sold it and didn't look
back.
KG9HV
N6KYS Rating: 2007-02-10
DO NOT buy this receiver! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I LOVE Heathkits, plain and simple. I've restored several DX-100's and DX-60's, have had several SB Single Banders, linears, etc. I would never trade my DX-60B for anything. That said, the HR-10B receiver is a real frustration to own. It was so poorly designed, particularly in the bandswitching area, that it rendered the receiver virtually deaf, especially on 10 and 15 meters. Spending hours to find capacitors out of spec and even doing a tedious alignment of those front end circuits will yield only marginal improvements. If you have a DX-60, and want a companion receiver.....find a Collins or Hammerlund, etc. This radio is so bad, it's not worth the grief you'll experience in using it.
ZL3AG Rating: 2006-12-05
"Nostalgia" Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
Bought one of these new in 1969 whilst still at high school. A great experience to build up the kit and it worked well first time. It saw most of its active life in my shack on 80 and 40 and did the job OK. At that time in ZL the AM to SSB ratio was about 1:1. It was a good AM/SSB receiver on those lower bands. Quite deaf on 15 and 10.
As for performance, well quite basic but reasonable value for money and a great deal of fun to build.
Sold it at the end of the school year to another in-school beginner and saved my dollars during the first year of working to buy a FT200.
Have often wodered where it finally ended up.
AH6FC Rating: 2006-08-10
Good novice receiver Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
Never owned but used (borrowed) many times as a novice. I loved this receiver. It was so much better than the Heath GR-64 general coverage piece of junk receiver that I was using initially. I used to lust after the HR-10. Sure you needed to use the BFO to copy cw or ssb, but who cares. Back then a lot of the the lower end rigs had BFO's.

Sure not sensitive (1 uV!) and marginally selective, but it was a blast.

73,Bill
N6SFC Rating: 2006-06-03
decent RX for the $, needs help for CW Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Having struggled with one of these radios as a novice a zillion years ago, I felt compelled to add my opinion to the forum here. This is a very simple receiver and one should not expect too much in terms of performance especially on 15 and 10. For what it is, it works pretty well and it's easy to work on for the inexperienced wanna-be radio expert. One nice feature of the HR-10 is the front-panel "cal reset" control. This allows you to electrically adjust the dial calibration to a marker. Virtually all other receivers of the era had a hokey mechanical adjustment to shift the dial index back and forth, and the "cal reset" control actually trims the oscillator frequency in the HR-10. That's nice. If you're planning to buy and use an HR-10, by all means get a calibrator accessory for it. Heath made an optional accessory 100 kHz crystal calibrator for the HR-10 that they called the HRA-10-1. This was a neat little sub-chassis that plugged in to an octal socket inside the receiver, switchable from the front panel. My radio did not have one, and I sure could have used it. The biggest problem I had with the HR-10 however was poor CW selectivity. This receiver would have benefited greatly from a switchable 500 Hz IF filter like the HW-16 had. Since this receiver was used mostly by voiceless novices of the era, it's a shame that Heath did not think of this shortfall when they designed it. The 3 kHz crystal lattice filter works great for SSB, but QRM was a constant problem on 40M CW. The HR-10 uses an oddball IF of 1680 kHz, so readily available Q-multipiers set up for the more common 455 kHz IF are not compatible. If you're planning to use an HR-10 and are more clever than I am, do yourself a favor and build a "Select-O-Ject" and modify it for 1680 kHz. Better yet, save your money and buy a Drake 2B or a Hallicrafters SX-111. These are vastly superior radios. You definitely get what you pay for. HR-10s are cheap and common as dirt. I've seen many of them at flea markets for $25. A working 2B will probably set you back $200 or so. SX-111s are usually a little cheaper than that, but they are huge... almost twice the size of a 2B or an HR-10. If you get yourself an HR-10, tune it up and you'll be surprised at how well it works for such a modest investment. Don't expect too much, though. It is what it is.
VE3EFJ Rating: 2006-04-28
Nostalgia - but thats it. Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
As an HF SSB/CW receiver, its a struggle to say something really positive and yet be honest. I rate it a 2. Price does not enter into the picture. I was going to rate it a 3 to be kind, but after reading my review, it truly "needs help".

First, its amazingly stable and its not that bad for selectivity on SSB. One needs to fiddle with the RF Gain and BFO for a decent copy. Recovered audio is OK. While the slide rule dial does not give that ultimately accurate a read out, it tracks well from band edge to edge. And thats... about it.

Where the HR-10 fails is that its deaf as a post on 15 and 10 and there is no product detector. It should be MUCH more sensitive on the two bands mentioned. The problem is in the front end and there's not much you can do about it. Without a product detector, received signal strength is a signifigant factor for good copy, and there is no AGC for SSB/CW. The novelty wears off quickly.

Contrast the HR-10 with the HR-20, the mobile SSB RX. Both were made at the same time and yet the '20 will run rings around the '10. The HR-20 has a similar design, yet it is sensitive and nice to use. No contest.

As a "nostalgia radio", I can see why one would want to duplicate their first station with the DX-60. Great fun. But as a receiver for SSB/CW there isn't a lot to recommend it. The point is that even Heath made a better radio of similar design at the time. Yes, Heath packaged this radio so a radio novice could successfully construct it, and selling price was a concern. However, the end result just doesn't age well at all. Today its a reminder that "the good old days" sometimes had a different benchmark for usability. I'd have an HR-10 again today if I had specifically unique reason for having one. An "inexpensive HF SSB/CW receiver" wouldn't be it.
WB0FDJ Rating: 2006-02-02
A simple and solid receiver Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Bought mine from a good ham friend, back in '71 when I got my novice ticket. $50 and he threw in the Dow Key Relay. Used it with a HT-40. Tubes. Heat. A front in big enough to drive a truck through. Noisy. But very, very simple. Easy to work on and repair. No bells and whistle to go wrong. Reliable. Every time I fire up the receiver on my TenTec Omni V, I think about the days of copying other novices through 40 mtr QRM on a hot summer night with no filters. Oh yeah....