LOWE SRX-100 / TARGET HF3

SWEET SOUNDING OLDIE

We've all got our favourites from the 1990's haven't we? For me, there were a few receivers that I remember very fondly and they include the AOR AR-3000A, the LOWE HF-150 and later the LOWE SRX-100 (or as many know it here in the UK - the TARGET HF3).

I fully acknowledge that we look at this old stuff through rose-tinted glasses and perhaps ignore the fact that better technology exists for less than these 90's price-tags.

The HF3 was a bit of a downgrade to my beloved HF-150, but at the time, I was feeling a bit skint and this new budget receiver was getting some great reviews, despite it being a quarter of the price of others, so I bought one and loved the sweet sound.

As much as I had enjoyed my ownership of the 150 a few years earlier, I had no problem admitting that the HF3 was much nicer to play with. Tuning around (1kHz steps) was very easy and it had that progressive tuning which meant that the quicker you spun the dial, the quicker the tuning rate increased. By comparison the HF-150 was a royal pain to use in SSB mode - OMG it was soooo slow!

A Clarifier dial on the HF3 allows you to fine tune in between the 1kHz steps and generally worked well. Back then (I feel), ham operators tended to stick to round numbers when calling QC - eg 14.240.0 but these days there seems to be a hell of a lot who make a point of going in between eg 14.240.5 which makes tuning around more awkward on this radio. I should mention that the calibration of this radio is out by a couple of kHz.

The receiver was well built, presented in a fairly compact case with a great sounding speaker on top. The rear panel (on mine) has a port for an external speaker, but I never felt compelled to use one. Even from new, the radio had a lovely warm sound which made you comfortable with extended listening times. That's not to say it sounded woolly - it was just easy on the ear - something we all like.

One thing which I definitely remember is how sensitive it was to the antenna being used. Chucking out a length of random wire was not the way to go. The HF3 benefitted from a good antenna being attached and a coupler in-between to provide a match.

These days I occasionally use this radio to listen to the ham bands and to be honest, I don't sit there trying to pull in weak DX stations - I just tune into the stronger signals and enjoy the QSO's. On SSB the radio uses a pretty wide 3.8kHz filter. On AM it uses 6kHz (there's no swapping between them). There's no FM or CW modes. Apart from the ham bands, I also like to take a spin on MW & LW and I find the HF3 to be particularly good here.

The screen is a simple LCD and that's the beauty of it! No fuss, no graphics, no need for reading glasses, lol. Just spin that dial and enjoy what you pick up. The coverage, by the way, is from 30kHz through to 30MHz with no gaps.

It's not the best receiver in the world, but I find it good fun to use and super pleasant to listen to in a comfortable chair with a hot cup of tea 😀. 

But to be honest, I think it's about time to let this go - my shack is getting smaller and smaller, so I've packed it all up and I'm probably going to put it on HamRadioDeals.

Fitted with external speaker port