Marine Receiver – SAILOR R 1120
The following review and videos by Radio Officer Nino Paglialonga IZ7DJR (Italy)
Dear sparks now a real jewel :
SAILOR R1120 general coverage marine receiver made by S.P. radio in Aalborg Denmark.
Still in production on 1987 this great receiver was quoted more than 30.000 mk on a Finnish marine products price list ( 11.000.000 italian old “ lire “). It isn’t well known and its sizes: 12 h, 45 w, 35 d _cms. (rack system 19’’). R1120 covers 10 kHz to 30 MHz continuosly and automatically switchs 7 front-end band filters. Great RF selectivity due to a tunable preselector on the front-end acting inside each band filter. It is a double conversion receiver 1st if =10,6085 MHz & 16,6085 MHz, 2nd if = 600 kHz, all solid state.
Other filters: 7 (seven!) xtal filters:
2 dedicated to “roofing filtering” and 5 choosen for best mode filtering.
Usb/cw/rtty (Lsb by bfo). Digital display and synth. Down to 100/Hz.
Tuning by numeric dial or continuosly by tune/knob + unlock button.
It is a rock: frequency drift short time= 5 Hz, long time = 25 Hz… per year!
Now my opinions:
177 pages to describe a radio receiver, but 177 seconds o so to use it.
Ergonomic commands , maximum flexibility, one knob per action.
Noise generator for front-end peaking.
A solid, heavy tuning knob: smooth action, nice feeling (inside: optical rotation encoder).
Great efforts spent by Danish engineers to explain everything on the user manual.
Sailor R1120 receiver DOESN’T USE CUSTOM OR SPECIAL PARTS .
So after years, servicing is simple using common (well chosen) electronic components.
All boards are dedicated to a single function , detailed description and two sides board drawings on the service manual.
To keep inside noise low, Danish engineers preferred to limit the synthesizer step down to 100Hz (It is a real receiver not a lab instrument).
Tuning display by green LCD .
Restful cw reading, even by internal loudspeaker. Choosing 600 kHz if frequency, filtering is excellent, deep sides much better than common 9000 kHz filters.
Signals coming out clean, even on wide filters.
It is impressive to compare cw signals even on a modern ham receiver.
The ssb filter shows a 6/60 dB ratio of less than 1,6. It means that a 2350 Hz channel becomes 3700 Hz only, down 60dB.
Cw filters are superb and the very narrow filter BW = +/-190 Hz.
Quite unusual, but useful: a page dedicated to operational tips for AGC use and another page voted to noise blanking (NB not used ! ). This is a marine oceanic receiver and have to struggle against statics expecially in tropical zones.
Last but not least: R1120 Sailor claimes an inside TCXO at 10 MHz: excellent and guaranteed frequency stability .
A couple of videos filmed by me iz7DJR / Nino Paglialonga
73’s
