[Lowfer] Icom R-75 Specs

[JD]

It may be that some people haven't read the article closely enough.  When I 
prepped it for publication, I suspected there might be confusion.  I didn't 
want to change any of John's wording, so instead I made it a point to 
bold-face the acronym VLF in that part of the evaluation.

That's V-L-F, at or below 30kHz, not LowFER or NDB frequencies.  His exact 
words are: "Most of the spurs fall below 200 kHz and won't affect beacon 
DXing at LF.  However, in the event you want to DX VLF beacons, this 
receiver won't perform well."

If I were writing the article, I might have been a little more precise and 
phrased it "most of the spurs fall below 130kHz," as clearly shown by the 
noise floor scan.  There is a conveniently located gap between spurs at 
120-something kHz and 200kHz, in which both the 2200m and 1750m bands 
quietly lie...in the LF spectrum, in other words, where both the article 
itself and users on this list can attest that it performs quite well.

There are 12 spurs from 30 kHz up to 500 kHz, only one of which is 
particularly strong... but from 30 kHz on down (VLF) is where 22 more spurs 
can be found, and strong ones at that.  That's why he said "in the event you 
want to DX VLF beacons, this receiver won't perform well."  He meant VLF 
literally.

For those who haven't read the article at all, the thing he said about 
shielding involves the fact that the main board is mass produced in a way 
that resembles nothing so much as a computer motherboard...lots of exposed 
SMDs, and lots of dependence on the backplane and some clip-on metal covers 
in strategic places to provide shielding.  It is OK consumer electronics 
construction, but is definitely not laboratory grade like a good SLM or 
mil-spec like some of the other commercial receivers that have been tested 
for the series, which will appear in coming months.

John