Through good fortune I managed to pick up a RE331 UHF sparking source detector,
at a ham friendly price. Not cheap, but within my ham budget.
I thought that I would just give a brief review for those who are considering
buying this instrument
1. It covers 320mhz to 340mhz according to the spec. However, the dial is only
roughly calibrated and can be off 1 or 2 mhz off from the marked dial
positions. Its no big deal. It's in the UHF mil air band and there's nothing
that will cause interference here
2. The manual is very basic and covers common sense technical options to find
sparking noise sources and multiple sparking noise sources. The manual clearly
states that its optimised for locating sparking noise sources. It does do this
very well.
3. It's very well constructed. Good cabinet work alignment and would be easy to
maintain. Its easy to open for curiosity, and it would be easy to fabricate or
mount your own yagi design onto the receiver unit if you wanted to do so.
It's very elegantly designed compared to the MFJ unit which just seems wobbly
and fiddly at every level even though it does work.(I have one as well)
4. It appears to be a very sophisticated design looking at the well layed out
PCB, 2 SAW filters and numerous tiny SMT parts with a very well laid out PCB.
It would be easy to repair or work on if you every had to do so if you are
skilled in SMT. It has an ARM processor inside which indicates the design
sophistication.
5. The receiver does not have a classic AM receiver sound. It almost sounds
like you are listening through something like a 1 khz or 800 hz CW filter
rather than say a 6khz am filter. The audio seems raspy and peaky.
I can't honestly say what the receiver topology is, but my suspicion is that
it's a modern version of a regen circuit filtered through several SAW filters.
Much like the K0DK design that was published in QEX. The meter appears to be
calibrated according to the manual however checking it with my Rohde signal
generator and its hard to know what the Dbuv scale corresponds too, because it
certainly does not track the signal generator DbUv scale(Rohde SML03) Not that
it matters.
6. The Dbuv meter has a nice response that seems to have all the ballistic
characteristics of an analogue meter movement. I rate it as excellent for
peaking and nulling signals.
7. The 4 element yagi is gamma matched and seems to have a clean pattern.
8. The RF gain controls and audio high low positions are adequate for the job.
The Dbuv meter always remains unaffected in its reading regardless of RF gain
settings. Excellent dynamic range for the DbuV meter and RF gain level control
seems perfect.
9. The gain distribution of the circuit is well done and sufficient for finding
noise. What is interesting is that minimum sensitivity seems to be no more than
-102 to 102dbm with a 1khz modulated AM source. I felt that it would have
higher sensitivity since it detected sparking poles so well. But I was
surprised by this -102dbm figure. I will explain why in the next point.
10, I did a comparison with several wideband AM receiver HT's, a range of
scanners like the AOR 8200, Icom R20, Icom r10, Yaesu VR500 and the supposedly
excellent Yupiteru MVT7100. The RE 331 just blew them all out of the water when
finding sparking pole noise sources. Its seems that the AGC's in these radios
wash out certain pulse widths and things like sparking noise sources unless
they are very strong. I know many ham radios are designed with AGC responses
that minimise hanging on pulse noise and this may explain why the RE331 is much
superior when it comes to detecting spark noise. As an example my cars ignition
noise is low to non existent on around 300mhz. The RE331 could easily hear
these pops despite having a sensitivity figure well below -130dbm when these
other radios could not detect the weak ignition noise despite having less
sensitivity maybe 20 30db less sensitivity. So the RE331 is clearly
well-designed with an AGC designed to capture various pulse widths and pulse
repetition rates far better than most ham radios and scanners at the same
frequency. The point is that if you tuned the average HAM HT or scanner
receiver to the 330mhz frequency you will miss many sparking sources that the
RE331 will easily pick up. I may off with my reasoning, but the evidence from
my testing is very clear in this regard. I was able to pick up minor to very
severe sparking noise sources on many poles just standing in the street and
pointing the yagi from one to the next. The fidelity and resolution is superb
in this regard.
11. I always questioned the extreme price of the RE331 and their other units
but it becomes clear that they have professionally designed equipment that
does what they claim and it does it better than a workaround like just using
any AM receiver with a yagi. I am not affiliated in any way with Radar
Engineers. I just managed to get lucky by finding this unit at a reasonable
price. I would like to acquire one of the RE242 or RE243 models however I dont
think I will be so lucky since they are very rare here in Australia and are
almost never sold by the utilities.
12. In short if your club or profession can justify the price I can really
recommend the RE m331. I fully understand that this piece of equipment is
outside of the price range for most hams however you may be lucky and pick up
an affordable second hand unit. If you can hire one to find a sparking noise it
would be well worth the price.
Overall I was impressed despite being a ham sceptic that believed that this
unit was a simple AM receiver with yagi bolted to it. I hope some will find
this information useful. If you have any questions, vk3od@arrl.net
73
VK3OD
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