Just a one off experience, but perhaps typical. I find that my Kenwood 450
with less than 200 hours on it, does not hear things I hear on my Ten Tec
Scout and my Ten Tec short wave general coverage receiver kit.
This is noticeable on 160M and 80M especially, where the Kenwood
"seems" normal like other yaecomwood radios, but has some noise, from synth,
that obscures the bottom of the band noise.
I would say the Kenwood 140 at the Red Cross station I use also suffers this
way, but I need more A-B comparison to be sure. Once I used a Yaecom
contester's FT xxxx at Field Day and found it inferior to my Scout in ease of
receiving. Its sensitivity to near by stations in the contest field day
environment made a lot of listener noise. You had to invoke all its bells and
whistles in knob twiddling to pull a station out of the QRM.
In the same field day, there was a Kenwood TS 50 and its was wide as a barn
door, and almost impossible to use in SSB contest environment. It was much
inferior to my Scout.
I heard the Omni VI receiver has had good reviews on this list, and more than
once someone has pulled a station out, a weak one, from near a strong station,
and you could not hear the weak station on a synthesizer noise possessing
Yaecomwood. Crystal mixing does have that advantage in the Omni VI. Now,
there might be band conditions where the advantage is not as obvious, but that
is another story.
73, Stuart K5KVH
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