A solid state communications receiver covering five bands from 150 kHz to 30 MHz (150-400 kHz, 535-1600 kHz, 1.55-4.5 MHz, 4.5-13 MHz, 13-30 MHz), produced by Radio Shack from 1975 to 1980. It operated on standard AC or 12V DC and required an external speaker.
The DX-160 came out several years after I had moved on from SWLing to ham radio, but I remember checking it out at a local Radio Shack store numerous times and wishing I owned one: It was such a beautiful radio! How could Radio Shack(!) have made a radio as nice as this?
Reviews on the set over the years have differed on its performance, but they all seem to agree on what a solid and gorgeous analog-era radio it is -- take a look for instance at the many postings about the DX-160 here on eHam.net. For me, its main drawback for SWLing would be that its band spread scales covered amateur bands rather than SWBC bands, making it really difficult to find a broadcaster by frequency. If I had been using this radio as a SWLer at the time, I know my own approach would have been to tune in a station and then use the WRTH to figure out its frequency.
A few years ago I bought a DX-160 on eBay, put it in my "shack", which is a combination of communications receivers and nostalgia sets, and hooked it up to an external long-wire antenna on the roof of my apartment building. Since then, I've used it off-and-on for SWLing, sometimes to compare its reception to my Sony 2010 and Kenwood 940S, and I've often been pleasantly surprised by its performance: No, it doesn't compare to the other two sets, but then its reception is better than I had expected. And yes, it's as beautiful as I remember it being.
my "listening shack", a few years ago
DX-160 Owner's Manual pdf, 20 pages, click to open
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