30+ Pounds of Listening Fun

[spongella]

Just got this Sierra 303B on Ebay, it's a frequency selective level meter formerly used by the New England Power company (as per the ID tag). These units can be re-purposed as LW/MW/SW receivers. Am putting this one through it's paces. Thirty pounds (a little less now that I removed the 12 "D" ancient NiCads) and boatanchor-sized. But it's a beauty with plenty of knobs, switches, pushbuttons, big meter, LED's.

Also known as frequency selective voltmeters. Am in the process of checking it out, so far MW coming in great, DGPS signals on LF loud and clear, NAVTEX on 518 kHz loud and clear, heard a few beacons too.

Range is from ~ 9 kHz - 3.3 mHz. WWV on 2.5 megs heard, W1AW code practice on 160m heard. CHU Canada on 3.332 heard too, but granted these are strong stations. How it'll do on weak NDB's is yet to be determined.

Some of these units cover from LF up to 30 megs.

Anyone out there ever used one of these on the job back in the old days? Would be interested in knowing what it's original intended purpose was.

Thanks

 

[KE4EST]

Thanks for sharing! I myself enjoy restoring old boat anchor equipment back to working order.
Currently working on restoring a Heathkit Laboratory Generator. I have restored lots of older stuff, but for some reason I do not remember restoring a Heathkit.
I have a few pieces of Heath Kit gear I have to restore, someday.
This one looked the most intact. I think I have all the tubes it needs. Just need a couple more large electrolytic's to replace the old paper ones.

Best I can tell from research is, this was a company made unit and it does look very tidy and well done on the soldering and wiring.
They sold one's they labeled RF Signal Generators, they sold as kits and the Laboratory Generators were commercial units.
Same thing, but the commercial ones have a little more output and more attenuation options to choose a larger range, for testing.
This model covers 90kc to 30Mc. Almost has to be used with a frequency counter for proper alignment uses, but I am mainly just restoring it for the fun of it.