To be fair to the two radios you mentioned, that was on FM, and any audio mode that needs a wide frequency response is notoriously difficult to be subjective about...
Having been an AM CBer in the the UK, I quickly noticed that FM CB rigs that became legal in the UK did not seem to do as well as the old AM CB rigs from the USA had done. I'm told that AM on 2M and 4M in the UK used to 'get out' further than FM does. But, again, that's a subjective view from friends of mine who used AM on those bands before FM became the normal 'local' mode. Then I took the Amateur Radio exams and learned that different modes behaved differently, and that some transmitters seemed to 'transmit' better than others. The trouble is that, even if you use the same mode, transmitters are often set up differently to other transmitters. You need to check on the various settings for the microphone, audio bandwidth, compression and other audio an transmission qualities. Then you need to check that the receivers are set up in the same way... In the UK the UHF and VHF repeaters have just gone narrowband, and anyone with an older FM transmitter sounds distorted on audio retransmitted through the repeater. So, you need to check that the SDR1000 and the TS850 were both set to the same receiver settings to ensure a like-for-like test. Having only just got my SDR1K back up and running, on a subjective test I would say that my present set up is probably as good as my old TS850S was, in terms of raw receiver performance, but it has far more in the way of receive filters, displays and the potential for improvement if I can afford a better sound card and as a microwave transverter driver because the TS850S system was, in my opinion, open to a lot of problems with putting RF into a transverter when you did not want to do that if the voltage into the tranverter port was lost... Yes, it happened to me and I blew the input to a homebrew 4M transverter! So, I'm still a fan of the SDR1K over my old TS850S, but only just. The constant upgrading to higher PC specifications and sound card requirements, in my opinion, edges the SDR1K away from the ordinary operator, who wants to get a really good radio, because of the requirement to have an expensive PC/Soundcard and to dedicate that PC to just the SDR1K. Look at it this way, add up the cost of a PC of between 1.5 and 3GHz performance, add in the cost of the M44 soundcard (which is the cheaper of the two cards promoted) then add the cost of an SDR1000, the 100W amp and the ATU. Now look at the standard ICOM/YAESU/KENWOOD offerings and ask yourself "if I was not perfectionist, what would I do?" Then look at what you have managed to do with your SDR1K, look at the reviews and, in that, I'm counting some of the reviews by people who, whilst I accept their undoubted technical ability, have missed many of the practical problems and have not really reviewed the full capabilities but, in my opinion, produced a quick review based upon a few hours of use... Radio Station W5AMI wrote: > Just curious what I should expect on a comparison of rcve sensitivity > between the SDR-1000 and KW TS-850 on 10 meters. With one watt of > transmitted RF on FM between two stations 18.6 miles distant, the unit > we tested shows the 850 as a winner by a long shot. > _______________________________________________ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archive Link: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com
