[Ron Ramirez]

Okay, boys and girls, here we go with another exciting chapter of Ron's Radio Rectifications (the actual byline used by Antique Radio Classified years ago with articles I wrote for them).

This time in Handyman Corner, we have a Hammarlund HQ-129-X.

The backstory...

Earlier this summer, I had decided that this should be the year that I finally get a longwire antenna put up. It helped matters greatly that my son-in-law volunteered to do the work for me. About that time, I started thinking about what might be a really good shortwave receiver to use with the new longwire.

For some reason, Hammarlund came to mind. I really don't know why. Maybe because, in 45 years in the radio hobby, I had never owned a Hammarlund prior to this year.

I had an HQ-180 as my goal, but when the opportunity presented itself to purchase an HQ-129-X at Radiofest 2019 (Addison, Illinois) for what I thought was a very reasonable price, I did not hesitate. I brought the HQ-129-X home with me from Radiofest, although it took a side trip to Galena, Illinois and ultimately Clear Lake, Iowa before we headed home.

So...the radio as it looked when I bought it at Radiofest:

   

I did not care much for the non-original Dakaware knobs, and soon replaced them with knobs that looked more like the originals - not exactly the same, but closer:

   

These chicken head knobs have slightly rounded ends, sort of like the original knobs. The tuning and band spread knobs are like those used on the HQ-180 and similar Hammarlund sets, but still better looking than the Dakaware knobs.

Click on the image below to see a full sized image of the schematic for this radio (WARNING: 6.2 MB download).

[Image: https://philcoradio.com/images/phorum/HQ...9X_008.jpg]