I quickly learned I had to constantly ride the gain on my C21 so as not to blast out my ears when encountering a strong signal. It gave me a whole new appreciation of AGC. For some reason, I could never get more than 25 watts out of mine although no one can tell the difference between 25 and 40 watts. Cute rig. Lots of empty space inside that cabinet. One year in the Dayton Hamvention flea market I ran across some guys who absolutely loved their Century 21s. Sadly, I no longer have my C21. Someone else made me an offer I couldn't refuse and off it went to its adopted ham shack.
I agree. All the TenTec radios I've heard have really nice CW audio. The C21 in particular since it's direct conversion rather than superhet or sdr isn't sending the signal through a ton of stages before you hear it. I also think that big, mostly empty enclosure adds it's own sonic flavor to the bottom firing speaker. When the bands are busy it's no fun to use but they way things have been lately, unless there's a CW contest there's no problem working stations with the C21.
Hello. Thanks to Handy Hams I was loaned/rented for a low cost, this model. 40 watts cw is pretty good, enjoyed cw QSOs of up to 90 minutes on roughly 7.040 was a great way for me to forget the problems of the world and raise my cw speed while having fun making new friends.....until those dreadful foreign broadcast stations came rolling in and crashing the party. Those chats had allowed my to easily make the higher code speeds to get my tech plus and general-class licenses. Working on this no-frills rig trained me to really filter the signal from the trash. I wish code were still required for all licenses that give one privelages on HF. If nothing else it would give all hams more of a shared past. Mostly, so many hams out there missing out on the fun of CW. Whew. That's all. '73 N3LJP
The Century 21 is actually one of the newer radios in my Vintage Station. It has that classic look that drew me to it in the first place especially the analog version. The chassis is wide open with plenty of room if repairs are ever necessary. TenTec hit a homer with the C21! Dave-W7MBR
I love my Ten Tec Century 21. Fun to operate with no tuning needed. I like my Drake station, but got spoiled to no tune.
Use my Century 21 model 574 digital almost every day. A pure joy ! About ready to use my Christmas present Cootie Key with it. The two together are going to be a lot of fun.
I own a Century 21 that I was given when my friend "KA8JVK" passed away. Using a low budget sloper antenna with a home made balum it still works well. When I had my novice ticket back in the 80's, Lefty lend it to me and I made many contacts using a Mosley TA3 @ 4 feet off the ground, a piece of copper wire with no insulators hanging from the foundation of the house to a tree limb about 15 feet up and even made a contact with it loading the heat ducts. That was fun. I still like the radio. The dial read out is still quite accurate and even used it to receive low power signal WSPR etc. Jerry KB8AGJ
Wow, This looks so cool that I actually went out and bought a (very gud condx) C21! Arrived yesterday. Now to connect it to the Hi Mound. Rig is placed on top of the TS-990! 73 Chip W1YW
Strange bedfellows (in a comparison)--and some comments: 1) the Century , although not a modern rig, has a reasonable noise floor, with few weak signals copyable on the 990 not ALSO heard on the Century. IOW the sky noise still dominates over receiver noise for the Century--but not by much. 2) Forget about anything but the 500 Hz setting, for CW. 3) Can put out 50 watts (measured on a SMURF watt meter) but saturates there; am running at 30 watts out now; 4) overloading with too much RX RF gain causes huge IF and AF distortion. But I grew riding RF gain, so that's not a problem; 5) We really need a NEW 'Century' with similar functionality and no bells and whistles, at a 1/10 the size (yes, I own a KX-2, that's not what I mean. Fun radio, still viable! The Surprise of the Century ;-) 73 Chip W1YW
If the band isn't busy the 1 kHz setting provides for some rich sounding CW. I use the 2.5 kHz when I'm searching the band. I also will use the Offset knob to just listen to stations rather than the PTO. My PTO is well on it's way to needing a grease job. Isn't the full QSK of the C21 a thing of beauty? I haven't owned a lot of radios but none have had such nice QSK other than my other TenTec (an Eagle). Even my Elecraft KX3 has some light clicking/popping artifacts at full QSK that the TenTec radios do not.