[Boatanchors] Comarison?

[Ian Wilson]

This is an interesting thread from more than one perspective. Suppose you
were going to design a tube receiver today (let's just say CW/SSB/AM and
the HF bands only), you would have (at least) the following design
choices to make:
  - RF amplifier or not (possibly switchable in/out of circuit)
  - choice of first mixer stage
  - single conversion with heterodyne VFO, dual conversion
    with tunable 1st IF, or something else
  - tuning rate, size of band segments (if relevant)
  - 1st (and others) IF frequency
  - how do you get the required selectivity and where do you place it
  - AGC: IF-drived/AF-derived/none/other
  - additional processing (notch/noise rejection/...)
  - other features (breakin/hifi audio/transceiver operation/...)

It would be great to know what set of features from actual receivers
if combined (obviously, this may not be possible) would produce a
receiver that would be generally felt to be outstanding.

My set of choices, not related to particular receivers:
  - low-gain pentode RF amplifier/attenuator, can be bypassed
  - beam deflection mixer
  - dual conversion, tunable first IF (not the best choice for highest
    front end performance but constant tuning rate, VFO stability, etc,
    are appealing)
  - 1st IF around 5MHz, second IF 455kHz (filters, etc, are cheap)
  - 500kHz segments
  - 455kHz SSB filter / audio CW filter
  - audio-derived AGC
  - simple noise blanker. Notch filter

73, ian K3IMW