[Premium-Rx] Looking for recommendations on high performance VLF receiver.

[Robert Nickels]

On 4/9/2018 7:37 AM, Alberto di Bene wrote:
>
> Well, if saying "premium receiver" you mean some boat anchor of 30 (or 
> more) years ago, the discard immediately this my message.
> If instead you are open to the new possibilities offered by the 
> current state of the art, then I would suggest you to examine these
> two receivers : 

I too spent about 20 years (and much money!) on the quest for the 
ultimate LF receiver, and I have many of those that have been mentioned, 
including the R-389, SP-600VLF,  Racal and CEI models, as well as marine 
receivers from ITT Mackay, Dymek, Sylvania and others - and none of them 
can outperform a modern high performance SDR. As Alberto noted there are 
several good choices, to which I would add the SpyVerter R2 (which in 
full disclosure I am co-developer of) ahead of the Airspy R2.    This 
combination has become my primary LF/VLF/MF receiving choice because one 
of the design goals was excellent performance below 500 Khz, which is 
obtained through a balanced switching mixer and wideband design that 
extends to 9 khz.    There can be little doubt that the term "premium" 
has been redefined with the development of high performance SDR receivers.

Obviously the receiver is only as good as the antenna it's connected to, 
and I've found the original "Burhans" active whips to be vastly superior 
to the miniwhips that have become popular in recent years.   Part of the 
advantage is due to passive filtering at the input of the whip impedance 
converter which attenuates MF an HF signals, helping to preserve the 
dynamic range of the receiver.

73, Bob W9RAN