I tend to agree with my old boss that an "expert" is someone who can look
wise, keep his mouth shut, agree with the prosecution's case, and collect a fat
fee after the trial is over, but I have no problem with truely unbiased
experts.
But unbiased experts are like unbiased people. They are mighty scarce and
hard to find. Now, so I won't step on toes - about 40 years ago I bought a new
car. Three or four days later a neighbor stopped by with a big important car
testing magazine. And my new heap was rated dead last, totally unacceptable.
So I bought the magazine and read the tests.
My new wheels were "unacceptable" because the "expert tester" found a paint
defect called orange peel on the rocker panels of the test vehicle. The same
expert tester praised another car to the skies, even though it had to be towed
back to the dealer twice during the test. And even though the sporty wheel's
paint job had both fisheyes and the orange peel he lowrated my car about.
Somehow, I got the impression that the "expert tester" was more'n some biased.
Especially after I put more than 300,000 miles on that "unacceptable" car with
just normal maintainence.
Now, this afternoon a local ham called me and wanted to compare his new low
end rig with my Omni VI+. Sure, no problem. I met him here at 19:00 and by
19:20 we had three rigs connected to a switch from the quad. Changeover time
was
around 100 ms, estimated.
The bands were almost dead at that time, but there was a QSO in progress on
14.1974. We agreed the weaker station was copyable if you paid attention: R3
plus on the Orion, R3 minus on the Omni VI Option 3: and R1 or totally
unreadable on his new rig. Yes, we could tell something was there, but not
what.
During our discussion someone threw something on that sounded like more like
Halloween Fright Nite than slow scan. The weaker signal dropped to R3- through
the ooohwoooh racket on the Orion; R2 on the Omni VI, and disappeared
entirely on his rig.
Of course, that's subjective testing. But it gets to the heart of the matter
- what will this equipment do for me. While all the numbers are mighty
interesting and sometimes quite informative - I want to know what the item
under
test will do that some other similar item won't. And all too often to suit me
the text damns a really fine piece of equipment with faint or no praise.
Now that's my two kopeck's worth.
73 Pete Allen AC5E
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