[Premium-Rx] Experiences with Xiegu?

[Robert Nickels]

On 8/4/2019 10:20 AM, Terry O' wrote:
> Anyone have experience with Xiegu products?

Hi Terry,

I can give you a snapshot based on my experience.   The customer 
relationship described in the email you posted seems obvious to most of 
us, but seems to not come naturally to Xiegu.  I remain hopeful they 
will learn and come to understand the expectations of US customers at 
least, and provide the kind of technical information as well as the 
US-based repair option and customer support we expect.

I've bought two Xiegu radios from Connect Systems.  The first, 2 years 
ago,  was the version of the X-108 they branded as CS-108G and the 
XPA125  amplifer/autotuner.  They were sold at basically the dealer's 
cost because he'd had enough and was terminating his relationship with 
Xiegu over various support and technical issues.    All this history can 
be found in the archives of the Yahoo group: 
X108-Transceiver at yahoogroups.com

The owner of CSI is Jerry Wanger and since he has posted his contact 
info on the reflector I will pass it along here.   I'm sure he would be 
happy to address any questions you may have: jwanger at pacbell.net

So why did I pop for a G90 a few weeks ago?    Well, for one thing, my 
experience with the X-108 has been positive, and several friends have 
used them extensively with good results and no major failures, although 
they unquestionably have "quirks" which the manufacturer will not 
address or even acknowledge.  They're a cute radio that works well, 
especially once you learn how to deal with the quirks.   The X-108 is a 
conventional crystal-filter transceiver where functionality is defined 
mainly by hardware, and thus having good technical docs (including 
schematics, x-ray board layouts, etc) is essential  for troubleshooting 
and the lack of same is a negative.

However the G90 is an SDR which I determined was based on a QSD/QSE 
architecture feeding a DSP processor and MCU which meant the RF up and 
down conversion circuits would be pretty common (similar to Softrock, 
KX2/3, etc) and the bulk of functionality would be implemented via 
software.   The DSP/MCU circuitry is not likely to fail, and not 
suitable for home repair in any case. The receiver bandpass and 
transmitter lowpass filter arrays would be conventional in design and 
easy to figure out.

The bottom line for me was, the G90 looked like it provided a very 
attractive set of features including SDR architecture with IQ output, a 
very usable 20 watts of power and built-in autotuner in a compact 
lightweight package and a very attractive price (especially with the 
earlybird discount).    I determined that even if the manufacturer took 
took the same tone-deaf position as before it was an acceptable risk.    
And since CSI was willing to give Xiegu another chance based on having 
actual skin in the game ($) then I could do so as well, especially since 
there was already a track record of updating the firmware.   Obviously 
others may evaluate these factors differently, but I'd suggest joining 
the reflector and Facebook Xiegu group (where I'm waiting for membership 
approval) and keeping an open mind.

Subjectively I will say that in limited use I like the G90 very much.   
Like all modern radios there's a learning curve, but I'm still baffled 
by the absence of a mic or transmit audio level adjustment and that's 
one reason I joined the Facebook group. Assuming there will be software 
updates,  it should be a completely different experience than 
"hardware-defined radio' even though users will be dependent on Xiegu 
for updates.    I'm going to try to update to 1.6 soon, here is the 
download page: https://xiegu.eu/downloads/

And here is a video by Fred VE3FAL showing how to do the update (to v. 
1.4 back in Febr. which shows the updated functions in that release):   
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRX77r667pM

My only disappointment so far is the high power consumption - around 
600mA on receive - but that's typical for all modern amateur SDR 
transceivers (and the reason I designed my own).

73,  Bob W9RAN