In the Editor’s Shack: Three Lions

Its was one of those coincidences: This week, I found myself in possession – albeit temporarily – of three models of the famous Lowe line of HF receivers. The HF125 was on loan from our Radio History contributor, Scott Caldwell, who does not live too far away from me. The HF 150 model, in beautiful white, was still here but has now been sold, and the HF250 is my new favourite radio, for the moment. ‘Three Lions’, I thought. This will only make sense to you if you know that ‘Lowe’, with an Umlaut (Löwe) is ‘lion’ in my mother tongue. This has nothing to do with football, I’m afraid. Anyway, I love those three lions. The HF125 is surprisingly good on medium wave, the 250 is so comfortable to use and has good sound and a large frequency readout, and the white HF150 is just a looker, but also sturdy and reliable, just like me. I used all three to catch transatlantic medium wave DX and for the reception of RTTY and Weather Fax data. I used the NES10-2 MK4 Noise Cancelling Speaker with all three, to dig the words more clearly out of short wave broadcasts, read my assessment in the forthcoming April issue of RadioUser. I love SDR, but, ever so occasionally, revisiting heavy metal in our hobby is great fun. I look forward to hosting more vintage receivers here.