Just acquired on of these at a great price.

I was wondering if the Sony TFM series was notable.

Strange that this comes with a BFO, considering the limited shortwave coverage?

I have your radio's big brother, a TFM-1600 which I find notable. Purchased at an estate sale for $5.00, it has great reception on all bands after restoration and alignment, has a TRF stage, excellent audio, but sadly, no BFO.


Your radio was built when users of the "Marine" band often used SSB which I suspect is the reason a BFO was included. Of course CW and SSB is active among hams on the 75 meter band which can be received on your set.

Dave

Since the 8200 only tunes the marine band, perhaps that explains the bfo. It was AM before the mid-seventies switch to SSB (and a lot moved to the VHF marine band at that point rather than switch to SSB). But was CW used on that band for beacons or emergency?

When I kept finding shortwave portables at garage and rummage sales, I did bring home an RCA that was am/fm and the marine band. So apparently people were interested.

That is one beautiful radio!

Thanks for sharing the pic!

I hope my set performs as well as yours!

Thanks, mblack!

I have one other Sony, the relatively rare S5W, and it's performance is magnificent.

https://swling.com/blog/2021/05/zacks-sony-icf-s5w/


If this radio comes close, I'll be quite happy.

I dream of a CRF 230, but that is way out of my price range..

Just to add another model to the TFM series, here below is my TFM-1000L.

Beautiful radio!

Thanks for sharing the picture!

I once found a Sony, the one with the tunnel diode, it has a big speaker, and is heavy.

I paid five or ten dollars for my Panasonic RF-1600. I picked it up, and I thought it was an am/fm radio, until I turned it around and saw a time converter. It only shows one band at a time. That's heavy too. Initially I thought it was made to look like portable stereo equipment, but I guess it was aimed at the same market as the Zenith transistorized multibands.

The next step was to that "military styling".

All of these radios I got because someone didn't want them, not at collector prices. I once even found a partially disassembled Sony 2001 in the garbage. Double luck, not only was it tossed, but someone (me) who knew it found it.

Hi, mblack!

I had an RF-1600, gave it away as a present to someone as their first SW radio.

It was heavy, very well built, and a good performer!


My best lucky find was a working 1929 Freshman radio in a junk store.

Believe I paid $10 for it.