"All I Want for Christmas" 12/20/13

All I want for Christmas…

The nondefinitive guide to gift purchasing and receiving for shortwave listeners, pirates, and other hobby broadcasters.

"The Hopalong Cassidy Playset sure is swell, but I'm hoping the Harris HT20HS is in the garage." 

OK, it’s only five days until Christmas, so this doesn’t leave much time for shipping, let alone shopping or handing out lists to the ones you love. If you try submitting lists now, you might wind up with fruitcake, which could be a good thing if you’re the pirate who runs the Fruitcake station.

But, with that in mind, I looked up some interesting items for sale on eBay for SWLs & pirate listeners:

Disclaimer: I don’t in any way endorse any of the products in this article; they are simply items I thought looked interesting while searching around on eBay.

* Sony CDX-GT270MP car stereo shortwave head unit. $149.99. This head unit contains two shortwave bands: 2,940–7,735 kHz and 9,500–18,135 kHz (except for 10,140–11,575 kHz) in 5-kHz steps. It’s not easy to find shortwave head units.

·   * LPB AM-30 carrier-current transmitter. $99. Your own legal AM station, signal controlled only by the power lines and its power transformer. Of course, without the coupling unit, it possible to output the AM-30 into an antenna for significantly less-than-legal operation.

* E. H. Scott receiver in the cabinet. What’s cooler than a huge, heavy boatanchor? A huge, heavy boatanchor covered in chrome. Unfortunately, this one is missing the speaker, so the seller doesn’t know if it works.

* Sanyo RP-8880. $89.99. Lots of knobs. How often do you ever see a Sanyo shortwave radio? 

* Harris HT20HS 20-kW analog TV transmitter for Channel 9. $21,000 + an awful lot of shipping. Not sure what the choices of applications are here. Maybe take it to the Florida Keys and beam the signal to Cuba? Check the WRTH and take it to a country that still has analog TV?

* Wild Planet Radio DJ. $35. This toy is a part-15 AM transmitter with a built-in cassette deck, EQ, and sound effects. Although there are dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Of low-power FM transmitters on eBay, you won’t find many AM transmitters. The Wild Planet Radio DJ might be a toy, but it’s a great price for an LPAM transmitter.

 * Delco 1102 1935 tombstone radio. $59.99. Here’s a good price on a fairly uncommon radio that needs a lot of restoration, both physically and electronically. The shipping is about as expensive as the BIN price, though.

 * Guy Guden Space Pirate Radio LP still sealed. $99.95. Who wouldn’t want a copy of this? Of course, the price is a bit more than that of the typical CD.