Deep dives into legendary radios — one machine at a time. Each entry is an end-to-end analysis: how it was designed, how it measures in a lab today, everything that ages and how to fix it, and a modernization roadmap that is honest about what can and cannot be improved. Written by BG1SB. 中文版
Twenty kilograms, 0.1–2000 MHz, a built-in amber CRT, and a price that bought a car. Sherwood's lab numbers against 2026 flagships, every documented failure mode with its fix, and a staged roadmap: cool it, recap it, LCD it — then graft an SDR onto the 10.7 MHz IF and gain synchronous AM, a color waterfall, and digital modes the 1989 designers never imagined.
Japan Radio Company's final all-analog receiver: a tracking preselector, 1 Hz DDS tuning, WRTH's 1991 award — and a vacuum-fluorescent display with no fix and no spare parts. The design story from JRC's own US sales manager, Sherwood's numbers for the whole family, the JRC↔NDK filter cross-reference that makes real upgrades possible, the Gilfer/Kiwa NRD-535GS recipe, and an SDR graft at 70.455 MHz.
The modern counterpart to these two classics: a direct-sampling SDR with no roofing filters, measuring 107 dB of close-in dynamic range at 2 kHz — third on Sherwood's table, and the only sub-$1,100 radio to break 100 dB. Two widespread myths corrected (it is a 4.3-inch screen, and the scope spans 1 kHz–1 MHz), both independent lab datasets, firmware history to V01-12, every documented pitfall, and all seven remote-control paths ranked — including the undocumented FT4222 spectrum channel this site reverse-engineered.