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

[w3jn]

Barry, some of us on amfone.net have been discussing that very issue.  See http://amfone.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3833

THis is been more of a discussion on the RX340's suitability for hifi AM ham band use rather than CW (after all, amfone.net caters more to AM ops than CW) but there's some good info on using the SHerwood posted by Larry W8ER, and an analysis of the audio by Steve WB3HUZ.

Join us!  As they say, it's free and it's fun!

73 John
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Williams, Barry 
  To: premium-rx at ml.skirrow.org 
  Sent: Monday, February 07, 2005 10:20 AM
  Subject: [Premium-Rx] Ten-Tec RX-340 - Amateur Use


  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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