Estimate for a slopbucket rig.

[W1ATR]

Hi all, quick question. I looked around the internet to try and find an approximate value on a Swan 500 SSB rig. Condition is supposed to be very good with no corrosion or scratches and I think he said it comes with a box of spare goodies.

I haven't seen this radio yet, but it's from a buddy that's assisting with an SK's estate.

I know it's a slopbucket, but I'm thinking of adding it into my collection.

What do you think.

TIA

[WD8BIL]

$250 .........Tops.

[k4kyv]

I wouldn't waste the space in my shack for the p.o.s.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Although several years old, this list does provide some insight into what people paid for ham equipment:
http://www.aade.com/hampedia/prices2.htm
On the left side of the screen ,scroll down, and from the list, click on Swan.

[Mike/W8BAC]

Tia,

I am speaking from memory and opinion and both might be flawed a bit but still vivid. I have to agree with Don in a way. I can only offer opinion.

Swan was a bottom feeder company. Low end pricing with high end (forged) specifications. Lots of big promises and not much new to offer. Many of us bought in to the BS but in the end that was all it was. A cheaply made but not half bad looking box of dreams.

Put your money back in your wallet and maybe shop for an FT-101 or some other Japanese rig of the era or a quality US made set.

I really wonder why the SK had a box of parts left over. You should as well. Others might disagree and they are entitled to they're opinion. I'm talking about first hand experience and I would not own one even if it was free.

Best Regards,
Mike

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

The same could be said for Globe/World Radio.  But I hear lots of Globe Kings on the the air.

Tia,

I am speaking from memory and opinion and both might be flawed a bit but still vivid. I have to agree with Don in a way. I can only offer opinion.

Swan was a bottom feeder company. Low end pricing with high end (forged) specifications. Lots of big promises and not much new to offer. Many of us bought in to the BS but in the end that was all it was. A cheaply made but not half bad looking box of dreams.

Put your money back in your wallet and maybe shop for an FT-101 or some other Japanese rig of the era or a quality US made set.

I really wonder why the SK had a box of parts left over. You should as well. Others might disagree and they are entitled to they're opinion. I'm talking about first hand experience and I would not own one even if it was free.

Best Regards,
Mike

[KF8XO]

Remember why they called them the Swan Two-Drifty and Three-Drifty...

[Bill, KD0HG]

The big problem with the Swine gear were the switched VFOs. Instead of operating on a fixed frequency range and mixing with a switched hetrodyne oscillator like the better Collins, Yaesu and Kenwood gear of that era, Swan switched the VFO, which made it unstable and drifty. On a 40 year old rig, the VFO and associated switches are going to need some TLC, if they're not worn beyond redemption. Caution! Steve's point is well taken here, they can be fixed like any other boatanchor, but be advised there's likely gonna be some fixin' involved.

Mike is correct in dissing the Swan specs...A Swan 500 ain't gonna do 500 watts PEP input, let alone output. They ate sweep tubes if you were a laggard during tuneups.

The plus side of the Swans is they used 2.7 KHz wide crystal filters instead of the narrower ones favored by the other SSB rig manufacturers. Matched with a decent mic, they can actually sound pretty decent.

I wouldn't go over $150 to $200.

[W1ATR]

Thanks guys. I kinda had the idea to go around a c-note if it's clean. I'm more about the parts and other misc stuff. If I want to torture any slopbuckets with nasty audio, I can fire up this Invader 2000 with all of it's squealy, buzzy distorted goodness.

It's one of those things where if I DON'T go and have a peek, it'll bother me for a long time. As the very least, if I go and have a look and it's all useless, then I can relax and know I didn't miss anything. (Last time I got too lazy to look, I missed a 32v3/75a4 pair, and to this day I still kick my own ass over that. Now I don't let anything go by without at least taking a peek.)

On edit: A buddy of mine was telling me once that he found an unbuilt scratchy Apache that got dumped out of the original box into a basement corner so the widow could use that nice strong cardboard box to store Christmas ornaments.

Needless to say, I was disgusted for the rest of that day.   

[ve6pg]

...i've seen quite a few this hamfest season...typical price here in ontario is 40-100bux, no more, and why would they be....
..ft101s, about 100-150 tops....
..tim..sk..

[KF8XO]

...i've seen quite a few this hamfest season...typical price here in ontario is 40-100bux, no more, and why would they be....
..ft101s, about 100-150 tops....
..tim..sk..

Could you grab me one of those $100 FT's? I'll get the shipping!

[W1ATR]

Don't jump the gun too fast. He said they were around for 40-100bux, but whats the conversion from the Canadian pound or peso or whatever it is they use, down to our worthless paper?

J/K Tim, I love Canada. You guys are great. And so's Rocky the Flyin' squirrel! I don't like hockey, but I like wearing a goalie mask when chasing people around the woods with a big knife. So I guess that counts.

[N3DRB The Derb]

viva Canadian Tire, Caramilk bars, GT's in the snow, and Friday Night Hockey!

[Ed-VA3ES]

The last Swan 500 I saw at a fester went for about $150.- $175.   A decent FT-101E goes for about $250. up this way, and it's  a far better rig.

And our dollar is roughly at par with the U.S.$    Hovering around  .95 to .97 depending on the day, and Sarah Palin's hairdo.

...i've seen quite a few this hamfest season...typical price here in ontario is 40-100bux, no more, and why would they be....  ..ft101s, about 100-150 tops.... ..tim..sk..

[ve6pg]

...you can always pay more, but with ft101s, there is a huge number around...at the milton hamfest this past summer, there were 4 ft101s fer sale...i was looking at a table, and the seller was very motivated..i told him i was not interested, and he finally said, that i could have the '101 fer 125bux...the guy beside me bought it a heartbeat....

..tim..sk..

[Jim KF2SY]

Forget the drifty Swan junk.
If you want a quality vintage slopbucket rig that can also do AM
Buy a Drake TR4 series rig.  Available, easy to work on, and they don't drift.

or
Maybe a National NCX5....

[KA2PYQ]

You might offer pocket cash, get a circuit diagram, convert it to
AM, and solve some of the drifting problem by cranking down
early and middle stages on a step down transformer or a variac.
That`s better off than chucking SW RF equipment and puts $15-
25 in a widow`s pocket. Mostly similar is converting it to a turret
switch VFO with a wirewound rheostat into a tapped tuner for
output coupling.

[KA2PYQ]

(Also don`t forget it could be CW RF).

[W4EWH]

Hi all, quick question. I looked around the internet to try and find an approximate value on a Swan 500 SSB rig. Condition is supposed to be very good with no corrosion or scratches and I think he said it comes with a box of spare goodies.

The last one that sold on epay was a 500C in working order, with the matching speaker and ps. It went for $299.

HTH.

Bill W1AC

[k4kyv]

Swan, Galaxy, Heapshit Hotwater rigs, etc.  Sideband for the masses.

Up till the early 60's, to get on slopbucket you either had bucks (Collins, Central Electronics) or technical expertise and proper test instruments to build your own.  Otherwise you stayed on AM. There were a lot of wannabe slopbucketeers running AM in the late 50's and early 60's.

Then the cheap transceivers came out, along with the high pressure salesmanship campaign to create a market for a new product.  Most hams gave in, trashed their older, substantially built AM/homebrew rigs and bought the cheap crap.  Once the novelty wore off,  many regretted getting rid of their older stuff built with quality components.  Out of this also came the infamous AM vs slopbucket wars of the 60's, and the legacy of deliberate QRM is still with us to-day.

Incentive licensing killed off most of the homebrewers and AM'ers, once and for all.  Then about 1970 the Japanese came to the rescue, offering superior quality radio appliances, just as they did automobiles.

Fortunately, a few of us refused to go with the flow and stayed with AM, and the mode barely held on by the threads from the late 60's through the early 70's, when interest in the mode began to pick up.  By the mid 70's, AM was well on the way to  making a "comeback", despite peer pressure from the mainstream amateur community and efforts to have it outlawed, through such measures as FCC Docket 20777.

Now, 35 years later, AM has been "coming back" longer than it was ever supposed to be "dead".  In fact, phone never really caught on in ham radio until after WW2.  Pre-War amateur radio was well over 90% CW, and high quality, strapping AM rigs were rare even in their day, which explains why high power 30's vintage AM rigs are so seldom seen to-day.  In the 30's, ARRL derided phone much as they derided AM in the 60's and 70's. 

So actually, AM has been "coming back" for many more years than it was ever a mainstream mode to begin with.

[ve6pg]

..don...lately there has been increase in new hams here...some are appliance ops, but i have come across many who interested in AM, and they have the technical ability as well...these folks appear to be in their late 40s, kids are gone, and they remember being kids, listening to AM, years ago...
...they now have the time for the hobby...
..i got my ticket a number of years ago, and when i was a kid, i would listen to AM guys, on 75, and 160...i was about 9, or 10 at the time, and did not even know what the "cw osc." switch was for, on my bc348...so, if i wanted to listen to hams, AM was the way to go....still is...
..tim..sk..

[K1JJ]

Tia,

The best ssb bang for the buck is a Yaesu FT-102.  The receiver is superb and very close in design to the still popular FT-1000D. Triple 6146's in the final.

Some of the guys here have them and have done the AM mods. They will do DC to light audio once modified.  Digital VFO, stable, clean.

I'll bet you can pick one up for between $150-$300 these days.   I personally have four, all modified. One is at my desk, one bedside, one in the shack and one a spare.

Do a search here for the DUQ mods.

BTW, I can't recommend the Swan. I agree with what has been said. The only thing I like about the Swan is the velvet VFO tuning. Other than that, it's rough sledding. I've worked on quite a few over the years.

Later -

Tom, K1JJ

[Tim WA1HnyLR]

I also have a Swine 500 slopbucket rig. It is in very good condition. It was a freebie . As with any piece of equipment I get ,I dehnyellphy it. Yep, fatten up coupling caps and increase the microphonium grid load to 10 meg or better for the usual D-10-4. The problem with the Swine 500 aside from the drift problems is the fact that they(the  manufacturer ) was in a watts race. How much power can you extract from a pair of TV sweepies. The Swine power supply is actually two supplies stacked to obtain 800 volts or so for the HV. If you break apart the two supplies and ground the minus end of the HV supply that is tied to the to the low voltage B+in the stock supply. This reduces the voltage to about 550VDC ,a much more docile voltage for the outpoot tubes. The power supply filter capacitor values are piss weak in value and should be greatly increased. I happend to have a pair of 1000 MFD 450 volt computer grade caps and equalizing resistors that I mounted in the power supply cabinet  external to the supply chassis. I just plumbed them into the supply. I used the existing HV power supply filter caps for addition capacity for the low voltage power supply.The outpoot tubes screen voltage source is taken from a 5K or so resistor from the LV B+,a poor way of doing business. I mounted a Vr 150 in the radio and stabilized the screen voltage. Set biass for 50 Ma. idle .  The RF outpoot is now 150 watts P.E.P. . Still plenty of power for barefoot slopbucket operation as well as more than enough power to drive a leenyar amplifier. If you want good AM performance ,just bypass the bandpass filter. With De-hnyellaphied audio the Swine would probably make a damn good exiter/ low power AM transmitter. The RX would be W-I-D-E with a capital W . AMizing these old slopbucket rigs is a very noble thing to do. Even though the Swine 500 and others of the ilk have too much VFO drift for slopbucket , In am sevice the drift will be unnoticed.
Have fun, Tim WA1HnyLR

[ka3zlr]

Well, with all do Respect..."Today"....I have one thing to say about Swan..."Parts"....

[K7NCR]

I've had a couple of Swans, and a Galaxy V. They were OK, but not worth keeping long term.
I wish I could find a FT102 for about $200,, they all seem to sell for $500 and up on line and in person! Anyone have a spare one?
On another note, moving is complete, thank goodness. Now to build the walls in the basement for my radio shop/shack. Will post some photos soon. Am renting long term from another ham, and he has a tri-band hygain beam on a 60 ft tower. His shack was tiny though, all rice box. It has a unfinished basement with a BIG HO scale train setup. I'm putting up walls for a basement shack with plenty of room! HOORAH! I tilted the tower down last week to repair the rotor control cable, and put a yardarm with pulley/rope to hoist up a wire antenna. I will probably get a W7FG 160 and feed my tuner with the open line. My Apache may load up the beam without the tumer. We'll see.
73 everyone!
Norm K7NCR