When I first developed ERGO, the Drake R8B was probably the most popular shortwave radio in the world.

R. L. Drake Company made great radios for ham radio, shortwave listening and commercial use since 1943. It dropped out of the amateur and shortwave segments around 2005. Its final shortwave offering started in 1991 with the R8 series of receivers (R8, R8A and R8B). The main advancement of the Drake R8B was the addition of selectable sideband synchronous detection for AM.

Drake radios are known for their sweet audio. Rich, and full of base. Perhaps because of their use of a low final IF, LC rather than crystal filters or audio amplifier design, Drake radios have a distinctive sound. The same is true for their MS-4 speaker. Take a listen to the audio in this  video.

Unlike comparably priced premium receivers of its era, the Drake R8B buttons had a mushy feel. And the tuning knob always seemed a bit flimsy, quite lightweight.

Still, Drake packed a lot of value into this box. Overall, the R8B received great reviews, including five stars in Passport to World Band Radio. “Superior all-round performance. This is the only non-professional receiver tested that gets everything right, where something important isn’t missing or sputtering and ergonomics are worthy.”

Controlling the Drake R8B

When it comes to remote control, the R8 radios are hybrid in two respects. First, they have some purely analog controls. For example, volume, passband and other front panel knobs except frequency are not interfaced with the internal CPU. They cannot be remote controlled.

Second, the R8 command protocols are also hybrid. Some functions such as mode and bandwidth can be controlled with simple terminated ASCII text. Others, such as frequency, require command data to be prepared in BCD format. Yet others – particularly information retrieval commands – return cryptic packed records of data which need extensive decoding before you can use the information.