RadioBanter - View Single Post - Winradio WR-G303i & Ten Tec RX-320D

January 21st 04, 11:23 AM

On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 03:05:03 GMT, wrote:

On Tue, 20 Jan 2004 23:53:29 GMT, (George Blomfield)
wrote:

Where have we heard "the am synch loses lock" before? :-)

You picked up the only potentially negative point amongst a myriad of
overwhelmingly positive ones. Well please yourself.

But if you owned a G303 as I do, you would know that the AM
demodulator is so good, that there is no need for a synchronous one
anyway. I even wonder why Winradio bothered. You are better off simply
using LSB or USB if one of the side bands or the carrier are damaged.

I hear a bunch of Icom R75 owners out there chuckling.

Why? Problems with Icom R75, as serious as they may be, are totally
irrelevant to this discussion.

LSB and USB are always tuned spot-on with the G303, so when you are
tuned to an AM station, switching to LSB or USB does not produce any
of the familiar beat frequency or distortion you would normally expect
to hear on other radios. You simply hear only the selected sideband
with perfect and equivalent audio quality. Now tell me with which of
your receivers you can do that (without the need to adjust the tuning
or the BFO, and without a perceptible difference in audio when you
toggle between LSB and USB).

Caught this on the Yahoo Winradio group-
--------
WinRadio has just posted a new version of the G303i operating
software. You can now do a frequency calibration for the
radio by tweaking the reference frequency parameter
in the wrg3.ini file.

I successfully used this parameter to eliminate the
small frequency error (5 Hz at 10 Mhz) of my G303i.
---------------------
OH,,, gee... it's called "calibration". :-)

Ohmigod, are you kidding? This guy's radio was out *five* Hz at 10 MHz
on a $500 receiver, and you think this is bad? This is 0.5 ppm you are
sneereing at, for Chrissake!

Show me another $500 receiver with that sort of frequency error.
Plus, being able to so easily calibrate it to an even better accuracy.

This is surely a powerful advertisement *for* Winradio, not against
it. You don't often get 0.5 ppm with a receiver costing ten times that
much...

The key though is this- no way would I ever want a receiver stuck
inside the noisiest possible environment- a computer!

If it works (and it does), then I surely would.

Besides, this is an old, tired argument. Read the review in Short Wave
Magazine: "Setting a new standard of cleanliness in receivers". (Note
that this also includes conventional radios which are not used inside
a computer.)

I can surely attest to that: Not a single birdie down to the -138dBm
(or so) noise floor, throughout the entire frequency range 9kHz to
30MHz, and sensitivity better than any receiver I have ever worked
with in my 30 year long professional and amateur career. Despite as
you say, the receiver is stuck inside the "noisiest possible
environment". How they manage to do this, frankly I don't know, but
they do.

And with which of your receivers you can also adjust the LSB or USB
filter bandwiths, continuously from 1 Hz to 15 kHz?

Who would want a 15khz filter for SSB?

Who would *not* want continuously adjustable IF bandwidth from 1 Hz to
15 kHz in 1 Hz steps for all modulation modes? You don't have to go
over 3 kHz for SSB of course.... ;-)

But I guess you are still not impressed. Well, I surely am... ;-)

George

I dunno George, you sound like a Winradio dealer. :-)

To me you sound like a desperate TenTec dealer trying to knock down
competition at all costs... ;-)

I own the product, so perhaps I do sound rather passionate about it.
But not without good reasons. I would certainly agree with any
reality-founded objective criticism, but I have not seen any of it
here. Of course there are negative points, and I can surely think of a
few, but even if I take those into consideration, this product simply
shines.

It may be be some of their more expensive external receivers that
go to 4ghz might have some merit but I'd have to see the real specs
and a real review (and those versions cost a bloody fortune.)

Usually, if a receiver is that "hot" we'd have seen real reviews

And indeed we have: There are real reviews in WRTH and Short Wave
Magazine and more. John Wilson of SWM is about as professional and
authoritative reviewer as you can possibly get. And so is WRTH.

and everyone would hear how wonderful it is.

It is wonderful. Can you hear me now? ;-)

I repeat- no one makes a decent affordable receiver that
could be considered state of the art.

Except Winradio... ;-)

Not even the TT RX-340
at almost 4 grand. (Never could understand why the RX-340
costs more than their Orion- with 2 rcvrs and a xmtr and much
more in one box!) Their RX-350 is an "image" dog. Never
tried the RX-320 and doubt I ever will.
I keep looking though....

Start he http://www.winradio.com/home/g303i.htm ;-)

George