RadioBanter - View Single Post

November 26th 04, 01:15 AM

wrote in message . ..
I'm thinking of purchasing an Icom PCR-1000 and I'd like to reach out
to anyine who has one or has used one. Reviewing the comments I find
on line, it's a 50-50 split; some love it while others hate it.

I live in New Jersey, not far from New York City so I'm in what most
would classify as a very heavily RF congested area.
" Thinking of using it DX'ing the AM Broadcast band, anyone have
any experience in how well it suppresses imtermod from nearby AM
stations?
" I do a lot of scanning in the VHF and UHF bands and I'm told
that the front end is similar to Swiss cheese when you connect it to a
good outdoor antenna. Any comments
" On HF I'm seeing comments that it's plagued by lots of RFI
from your PC.
" I'd like to use it to receive the VHF weather sats - anyone
have any suggestions for software that works well with the PCR-1000
for this task?
My access is often limited to USENET, so I'd appreciate if anyone can
offer any suggestions or comments would respond directly via e-mail.

Many thanks!
The PCR1000 is botha great and lousy reciever.
Like you mention the front end is wide open.
That can be greatly helped by an inline low pass filter.
A friend who has one lives withen blocks of the local police
and sveral 15X-MHz paging transmitters. so he built a filter
that chopped out everthing above 80MHz. He is intersted in 6mtrs.
He has great SW performance. At the cost of lossing 80MHz.
I live about 15 miles from the closet VHF (other then hams)
and I had almost no bleed throught issues. Sometimes aircraft
overhead would create momentary problems.
The bandscope was nice, but since you can't use it with CW/SSB
it was far from perfect. Icoms software sucks. Peroid. There are great
3rd party programs.
The DSP unit is great, but the PCR1000 runs warm enough without the
additional heat. Stabilitly and sensitity are great. I could just
pick up the GOES west satellite on 46?MHz. And it is just over the
radio horizpon from me.
For most lsitening I preferr a "real" receiver and use a Kenwood
R2000,
or a Tandy DX398 for HF and my Pr02004 or Pro34 for VHF/UHF work.
The PCR1000 is great in one way. You can prebuild lists of frequencies
for specifc events. SssBig snow storm comming, load the road crew
list.
T-storm load the list for storm spotters. Big plane crash off shore,
load the CG list.
I traded mine for a recent vintage laptop for my wife. The guy that
I traded it to has offered to sell it, a nice newer Tandy Handheld
and a newwer laptop for $350. I will almost certainly go for it,
because
the PCR1000 is a nice useful tool. And I like the newer scanner which
will do trunking(and has a port so you can program it from a PC, but
it will operate stand alone!). And a newer laptop would be nice. But
for day in and
day out use I will stick to my "real" radios.
It was nice to take the PCR1000 to the woods with a PalmPilot and do a
sruvey from DC to light.
The PC noise issue can be greatly helped by the appropriate use of
feritte
cores. The more the better. Put them on every line into your PC, your
mouse and keyboard (they both have CPUs inside), printer, monitor,
audio
lines and maybe most important your coax lines. RF from the PC can
"creep"
up the coax shield to the antenna.
None friend has his PCR1000 mounted about 1000' away from his "shack".
He lives way out in the boonies, and has the PCR1000 in the barn. Runs
power/data/audio to/from the PCR1000 with a burried cable. With lots
of feritte cores on the line. He has a remote coax relay to switch
from
a Doty antenna (do a google on Doty Low Noise Antenna) and a simple
home
made diskcone. He has fantastic reception.
Terry