All hams and/or SWLs like to talk endlessly about rigs they have owned or used. They recount in exquisite detail what they loved or loathed about each one, and defend their favorites with the kind of paritsan dogmatics usually reserved for sports or politics. God help you if you hint to a Collins affecianado that perhaps the mechanical "digital" tuning on an R-390 actually impairs its performance, or imply around a Hallicrafters nut that Bill Halligan, placing more emphasis on sales numbers than the Hammarlunds (Pere et Fils,)sometimes sacrificed performance for economy.
I am not immune to this very human impulse. I am getting old now, and as a result ever more opinionated even as I become too tired to fight the desire to recount my adventures (rather like Cooleridge's Ancient Mariner, only less diverting); so, with no further ado, here are my reminiscenses, opinions, and even a few facts about the old radios so many of us remember with the selective vividness of high-school crushes. But first...
As the name implies, weight and size go a long way toward deciding what is a boatanchor; but a more precise indicator is age and obsolescense. If one cannot say of a given rig, "Yeasu (or Icom or Kenwood) make one that does all that, and more, and takes up ten percent of the space," it's not likely to be a boatanchor.
Besides, all us old-timers just KNOW that regardless of what the spec sheets say, no one makes a rig today with the performance of a Hammarlund SP-600 or even a good working Hallicrafters SX-110. Solid-state devices are inherently more noisy than tubes; moreover, phase-locked loops, digital displays, and other microprocessor devices throw out all kinds of noise of their own. While you can build a solid-state rig that matches a Collins R-390 on the drawing board or in the lab, in the real world the Collins will hear things a Drake R-8A or an Icom R-75 can't pull out of their own internally generated noise. Or so we are convinced, and no young turk who's never had to pass a 13 WPM test to get on 'phone can tell us any different, even if they should happen to be right(and I'm not admitting they are, dammit).
Newer hams who have never mastered analog devices also complain that the older models are too difficult to use. A common question posed on the Glowbugs reflector is, "I love the look of my Hammarlund (or Hallicrafters or Collins), but of course it's useless without a digital display. How can I make one?" Ah, if only these naifs knew the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments that were involved in early analog-to-digital work, they would not so lightly pose the question. In the old days, we never did know accurately what frequency our receivers were tuned to, and WE LIKED IT THAT WAY! (A less splenetic answer, of course, is that it is far simpler to build a frequency marker, or use a modern digital rig as a frequency meter by tuning in the same signal.)
Ease of use is in the mind's eye of the user, though, and I know plenty of older hams who had rather chop weeds in the August sun than try to master a modern menu-driven rig. As a middle-aged man obviously conversant with at least some of the more recent technology, I am in the middle on this one, finding menus as intuitive in their own way as bandset/bandspread tuning.
I will say this, though; parts availability aside, I had much rather try to find and fix the problem with a relatively simple boatanchor rig than troubleshoot and repair a modern, surface-mount construction, microprocessor driven radio; so had you, probably, if you have done both.
So, pray don't put yourself to the trouble of writing me to tell me that I'm dead wrong, that any op in 1939 would have gladly have given up a kidney just to have had the chance to use an Icom 718 for six weeks, etc.; for, while I may be aware of this on some subconscious, purely intellectual level, my subjective self has set its face against this obvious truth. After all, this is just a hobby, and (to quote a far better writer and wiser man than I), "so long as a man rides his Hobby-Horsepeaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither comples you or me to get up behind him,-Pray, sir, what have either you or I to do with it?"
Other rigs, notably one Collins and a whole mess of Hallicrafters, will follow soon, so check back regularly. And, if you have any stories or opinions of your own about these or other rigs, send them to me and I will try to work them in. Be sure to include your name and call so I can give you credit.