WG wrote:
What is misleading about the truth. The rig is junk. You
don't say what you are comparing to. I have mine side by
side with a Yeasu FT-100d and I must say that even
without the AM filter the Yeasu's receiver beats the
394's hands down. You may want to look up some of the
less then good reviews in most of the radio publications.
Radio Shack had to give them away at less then 1/2 the
list price in the last year of its run.

If it's "junk",
- why do you keep it?
- why do you use it?
- why don't you give it someone who appreciates it?
- why don't you sell it?
- why don't you throw it out?
- why don't you improve it? You'll be pleasantly surprised at the results.
- why don't you do something about it?

Comparisons: I have a Drake R-4B, great radio in its day, but the DX-394
beats it hands down when it comes to warmup time and drift, speed and
convenience of tuning, sensitivity above 15MHz and frequency range covered.
The R-4B wins on immunity to overload and selectivity - both front end and
IF - and it smells (that could be positive or negative) of warm dust and
resins.

Reviews: both the ARRL Lab and the Radio Netherlands rated it good value for
money, 4 stars from the latter, when it was still selling for $300, before
upgrades. The majority of personal reviews on eHam.net agree; a small
minority of extremists rate it the way you do.

Radio Shack consistently sells off old stock at half price or less. Seven
years after it was introduced, Radio Shack Canada cleared them out at what
was then around US$85. Nothing unusual in that. That's what got me going
again in this hobby. Why was there leftover stock? Perhaps they
overestimated the potential market for mid-range, tabletop communications
receivers. I daresay that more than 10,000 were manufactured - a large
number for this market - hence the RADIOSHACKDX394 SIG is one of the largest
receiver-specific communities, exceeded only by the DX-398 SIG.

Tom