Well, for Christmas, I purchased the Icom R75 receiver.  Man, I can't
believe I spent that much money on just a receiver but I am still a big time
broadcast bander DX sort of a guy.  I can now take the loudest A M broadcast
station in Denver, K O A on 850 Khz, and tune just 10 Khz up or down and
copy weak out of state signals.  My Sony 2010 could never do that.  By the
time I purchased two additional filters for CW and the voice card, it nearly
touched 900 dollars.  I had a little 25 foot piece of thin wire running
around my office here in the house for several days and it worked well.
Today, however, we might end up with 8 inches of snow.  The last time they
said that, we ended up with 32 inches of snow.  So, last night, my son
pulled about 80 feet of wire off my roll and tied the middle of it off at
about the 40 foot level of my tower.  Sure made a big difference.  No, the
speech doesn't say everything you would like it to say but so far, I've been
able to figure everything else out and it isn't all that difficult to
master.  The speech reads S meter readings, the frequency, and the current
time.  You can turn any of these readings off in the menu but unfortunately,
the menu does not speak at all.  I use the Kenwood v7a 2 meter 70 centimeter
rig with the voice card and it is the same way, of course.  That is, it
doesn't read anything in the menu settings.  You can, with either radio,
interface them to the computer and make all the settings you want but that's
too much work for me.  Frankly, I found the R75 receiver easier to learn to
set up than the v7a dual band radio but that just could be my advanced age.
So, I finally achieved my desire of owning a big time general coverage
receiver.  I wonder if that makes me a better ham now?

Phil.
K0NX