I know what you mean...............sometimes you can get fooled by a
miscalibration of the dial. The 909 should be a pretty good receiver. I only
played with one briefly, and it seemed pretty good.
The Sat 800 should be ok, as long as you get ahold of one of the later units
that have the bugs worked out, or maybe even a refurb, if the price is
right.
Out of the under 500 dollar units, my favorite is the Palstar R30. All of
the units in this price range are good, but the R30 has the best sounding
audio. I have a few receivers, and I bounce from each one of them every
couple weeks or so.
My lineup consists of: AOR7030, Yaesu FRG100B, Icom R75, Drake SW8, Palstar
R30, Racal 6790/GM, and several homebrew units. Right now, the SW8 is the
one I am using.
My least use receiver is the Racal 6790..................not that it is a
bad receiver. It probably is my best all around performing unit, but is is
around 22 inches deep, and it just doesn't sit on the night table too well.
On a final note, a good way to check overall receiver gain is to see how
loud the internal noise is when you crank up the volume, with no antenna
connected. If the noise level increases a bit when you connect a 5 foot wire
with the receiver tuned up in the 28 to 30MHz range, you've got a receiver
that has a decent noise figure.
An 8 to 10dB noise figure is a good spec to shoot for. With this figure of
merit, as long as the synthesizer is relatively quiet (low phase noise and
low spurious output levels), the receiver will have that "quiet" sound.
Another advantage of having a synthesizer that has low phase noise is in the
area of reciprocal mixing. This is one of the main mechanisms that degrades
close-in IP3 (3rd order intercept) performance.
I hope this helps in your quest. The main thing is that you enjoy the
listening!

Pete

"Al Arduengo" wrote in message
...
"Pete KE9OA" writes:

I didn't realize that the 909 was that bad of a radio. The quiet
background
you are hearing on the Sony portable is usually a characteristic of a
receiver that doesn't have much gain in the I.F. strip. That isn't a
good
thing. Probably a single conversion receiver that has a 455kHz I.F.
which
would also cause poor image rejection (2 X 2nd I.F.).
Maybe you can get your money back for the 909.

Pete


Thanks for answering Pete. I have studied it some more and I found a
few things. On the SW1 setting of the Sony, the dial is about .5MHz
off. This led me to believe in some cases that the Sony was getting a
station the Sangean was not. I know, stupid but a fair mistake. As
for the noise level, I need to do a more organized study of
station-to-station comparison between the two. I will post results.
I really don't have a baseline for judging these radios since the
Sangean is the only one I have ever really used. I had a YB400PE for
a few days until I exchanged it for the 909. I didn't get a chance to
really exercise the YB400. I *do* like my 909. I just can't really
tell if it is top notch yet. I just ordered a PL-550 from liypn so I
will now have *something* to compare with. I still am interested
in the S800 unless I can run across some other model that is in the
same price range but considered a better receiver.

Any suggestions?

Best,
-Al
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