The Hammarlund HQ-150 is deaf in one ear and cant hear out of the other.
Was enjoying the soft soothing sounds of my favorite shortwave radio station when I turned the volume down on the Hammarlund HQ-150 for the night. The next morning I noticed that the diplay lights had both gone out. But didnt think anything of it. When i settled down to my desk to brainstorm what the game plan for the day was, I turned the volume up on the hammarlund, but nothing happened. No smoke, no pop or sizzling, NOTHING !
The hammarlund HQ-150 has always been one of my favorite boat anchor shortwave receivers that I have here in the office. Made in the mid to late 1950's, it has been a solid made receiver with no backlash on the dial and almost spot on frequency. I can get extremely close to a given frequency when I need to, and the HQ-150 receives almost as well as my more modern Kenwood TS-850. It also sounds really nice when listening to AM shortwave radio stations. I also like the antenna tuner on the face of the radio. This allows me to fine tune the receiver to match up with my 40 meter extended double zepp antenna up about 60 feet in the tree.
I have a pretty good idea of where to look for the problem already. First thing will be to test the 12ax7 which works as an audio amplifier bringing the signal up enough to drive a speaker at 8 ohm. I have the service manual for the Hammarlund HQ-150 so I can test the different voltages on the tube pins to find out where the problem lies.
In the meantime it looks like I will be putting the Hallicrafters S-40A back into service so that i can enjoy listening to Radio havana Cuba in the evenings. Dont want to miss that DX report.....