Telamon wrote:
In article ,
"mike maghakian" wrote:

The famous Dave Z who is one of the writers of receiver reviews for Passport
and his own website has some pretty bad things to say about the 340.
I had my 340 expert comment on this and here is what he said:
***************************

He criticizes the "sloppy" use of loose wires vs. ribbon wiring being used
on an RX-325 which was a cheap, fair performer in his review of the RX-340
and finds similarities. At first it seems like a valid thing to note. But
if you read his entire web presentation you'll discover the reason for this.
Ten Tec claims that ribbon wiring can interact from within and cause
unwanted spurs/hash on a given circuit board signal path. Dedicated wires,
however sloppy in appearance, causes less degrading of the signbal from
spurs/hash, according to Ten Tec.

He states that the synch is worthless. See my previous email for my
experience with the synch. I don't know WHY he says this!! Even that
R-75-loving Phil says the synch is fair, not worthless. My guess is that
when Dave has used a 340, he never bothered to read the manual thoroughly to
learn how to use it properly!!!!!!

I use the sync all the time. Works great. Whoever Dave Zantow is he
needs a reality check.

I have been inside the radio a few times once to replace the S meter
bulb and once to fix the cracked solder connections on the power supply
PCB at the output connector. I think someone got carried away pushing on
the connector during installation and cracked the solder. There is
wiring lose inside the radio that in a military specified radio would be
tied up better to meet things like vibration but this radio is not meant
for those conditions. The wiring is no better or worse than most
commercial radios. I don't see anything wrong with the radios
construction and in fact I think it's pretty good.

I consider myself "an expert" because I have owned this radio for years,
been in the hobby for years and have years of experience in electronics.
I don't need someone to tell me about the radios performance and have
found that people misunderstand specifications, or do not know how to
operate equipment, or misconstrue observations, or just make mistakes.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California


First of all, let me say that it's pointless to fight a "my favorite
radio is better than your favorite radio" war. If you like your radio
but the other guy hates it, well who cares? The important thing is that
YOU enjoy your particular radio and it's obviously doing the job for
you. But I'd like to add my 2 cents about the Ten-Tec RX340 anyway.

I have a Ten-Tec RX340. I can honestly say it's the best "table top
communications receiver" I ever had. Period. I can say this after
having owned the following table top radios (in no particular order):

Drake R8B
Drake R7A
JRC NRD-545
JRC NRD-535D
JRC NRD-525
JRC NRD-515
AOR AR-3030
ICOM R71A
ICOM R70
YAESU FRG-7700
YAESU FRG-8800
HAMMARLUND HQ-180AC
HAMMARLUND HQ-100
HALLICRAFTERS S-20R
HALLICRAFTERS S-120
HALLICRAFTERS S-118

BTW, I still have the Drake R7A and JRC NRD-515. They are real gems.

I'm not going to list all the reasons why the 340 is the best rx I ever
owned, there's just too many of them. If you had an RX340 and ditched
it, if you prefer a Drake R8 or ICOM R75 or AOR 7030 instead, that's
cool. Enjoy your radio and have fun. After all, isn't that the whole
point of our hobby?