Marconi 2018A

I recently picked this up off of eBay for less than $200, including the cost of shipping. Though ebay is a crap shoot, this time, I think I scored. It seems to work perfectly with the frequency and power output exactly matching my Kenwood TS-530S. The seller listed it as having an intermittent keyboard problem. I haven’t see any sign of that, but did notice in the manual that if reverse power exceeds a certain level that it will lock up the keyboard until power cycled. I’m guessing that this is what happened to the previous owner. There is a calibration sticker on the front that says “CALIBRATION LMITED to Residual FM <10Hz 01-16-2013 TECH 057", so it seems that it had some sort of calibration, just last year. This unit has seem a lot of use, as the lettering on some of the keys has worn off, but I can live with that. The manual for this device lists a copyright date of 1984, so the design has been around a while. The METRICTEST.COM website says that the manufacturer list price in the US was $5,995 for the 2018. Here is a little more about the specifications of this device.

Performance Characteristics:
Minimum Frequency: 80 kHz
Maximum Frequency: 520 MHz
Frequency Resolution: 10 Hz
Time base stability: 0.1 /mo
Minimum Output Power: -127 dBm
Maximum Output Power: 13 dBm
Power Resolution: 0.1 dB
Output Accuracy: 1 dB
Output Impedance: 50
Ohm Maximum Single-Side-Band Noise: -130 dBc/Hz
Harmonics (noise): -30 dBc
Non-harmonics (noise): -60 dBc
Modulation: AM, FM, Phase

What am I going to do with this unit? Well besides confirming that my Kenwood TS-530S is in tune, I’ll also be able to test out the HAL ST-6 and use it to develop the software I need to successfully receive RTTY messages with my vintage computers.