[Premium-Rx] Ten-Tec RX-340 - Amateur Use

[Williams, Barry]

I noticed what looked like a neat transceiver setup using software from
N4PY, the Ten-Tec Pegasus and the RX-340.  The RX-340 is the primary
receiver, the Pegasus the transmitter and secondary receiver.  This
system works QSK on CW, and looking at N4PY's other software manuals,
should be very powerful.  I then decided to look for information on
tests that would indicate the RX-340's performance in the ham bands.  I
was quite surprised to find that Rob Sherwood had tested a single sample
of the 340 and found it did not perform very well as far as close in
dynamic range.  (46 db at 5 kHz).  Rob said that this was a single
sample and that they had not had complaints from those who have bought
the SE-3 detector to use with the RX-340, he also mentioned that he had
a second sample from Ten-Tec, but equipment failure was causing a delay
in comparison testing.  I talked to one of the design engineers on the
project and he noted that they would have expected performance to be
about like the W-J HF-1000 (75 db at 4 kHz) since the block diagrams are
similar.  He mentioned that in the receiver's normal use the close in
distortion range is not an important measurement and that you would not
notice in listening as the DSP improves it by 40 db or more.  He also
said that if you get in a look the AGC voltages are really jumping
around, but they had done a lot of work on the AGC.  Both the Ten-Tec
engineer and Rob mentioned that you can use the receiver for 30 days and
if you don't like it you can return it.

 

Before I went any further I wanted to check and see if any of the RX-340
owners had tried the receiver on the ham bands, particularly in a CW
pileup.  It would also be interesting to see if anyone has used the
RX-340 to listen to a weak AM signal within 10 kHz of a very strong
signal.  I did some listening tests with my HF-2050 and it appears to
work pretty well, even in a pileup on 7010.  On the other hand, the
filters in the HF-2050 are not very sharp as compared to modern DSP
filters.

 

Thanks,

Barry

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