[Radio Wrangler]

I remember looking in awe ar an EA12 in Jim Fish's shop. Then years later at a KW201. My AR88 seemed very old fashioned.

£200 seems a very good price, though it's a long way from you. I can't remember what I paid for it in the late eighties. One of our local club members had got it out of the attic and asked me if I could check it over and check the alignment. Job done, I returned it to Alec and he asked what he owed me. I'm not in the repair business, I do things for friends or out of curiosity. He said he didn't want to sell it without knowing it was OK. Sell it! whatever for? I asked he said he wasn't using it and wanted to run his equipment down to what the actually used. I said I'd like to buy it. He said I could have it. It took a lot of doing to get him up to a price where my conscience would be OK. So that's how I wound up with my schoolboy crush!

It's pretty common for EA12s to have a crack across the internal S-meter plastic front. Eddystone made the offset joggle in the front panel too small and the S meter is pulled back by its mounting screws onto the points of the corners of the clear meter front. With this stress, cracks are almost inevitable.

Oh, by the way, they tune backwards but you get used to it.

Only covers the six pre-WARC HF bands.

If you don't add rubber feet they scratch the hell out of tables and you can tear yourself badly on the corners of the tilt bracket. Watch out.

I found a copy of the G2DAF pamphlet in Miss Taylor's emporium and devoured it avidly. Wow! this was IT! but I couldn't afford the 898 drive. I could have done the metalwork without any bother, but the cost of new IFTs and all those crystals. Yipes. Also I heard distant rumours of something called an RA17 which was frequency synthesised - whatever that was, it sounded impressive. Synthesised? Did that mean it didn't do real frequencies, only synthetic ones? Whatever those were? I never did see one for many years, and I could never have afforded one.

Back to the which boar anchor should you get.

The EA12 is lovely, but is being tied to the amateur bands what you want? THe rest of the HF bands are emptying as broadcasters move to the internet.

I think everyone ought to have an HRO or AR88 at some time. Get it sorted and you won't have to move it!

The CR100 will leave you wondering what it would have been like if you'd got that HRO/AR88

There are other gorgeous boat anchors around like the AR8516L our village pharmacist in Yorkshire had. Another wow set. But I think I like the electronics better of the CRM-R6A version.

All the world's a toyshop.

David