I have a 1209. Its pretty good, RF switching could be improved a bit.
There's a receiver RF transistor good for a 1 dB NF and the system NF is
more like 7 dB because, I believe, the front end switching is not great
and looses lots of signal into the PA section. Also I notice the PA bias
is dependent on the drive level, e.g. the RF sense doesn't have a
schmidt trigger to saturate the PA bias switch and it sounds better on
the air when hard keyed or when the delay capacitor is much larger. In
the future I plan to go to an relay for TR switching and get some of
that NF back and will use hard keying.
The box is not well shielded so receives local RF noises from TNC and
computers excessively. Mine will go into a better box with far better
feed through capacitors for the DC and control also.
There's NOTHING close for the price.
73, Jerry, K0CQ
--
FAQ on WWW: http://www.contesting.com/tentecfaq.htm
Submissions: tentec@contesting.com
Administrative requests: tentec-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems: owner-tentec@contesting.com
Search: http://www.contesting.com/km9p/search.htm
|