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Re: [TenTec] paragon II performance on longwave band??

To: Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment <tentec@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [TenTec] paragon II performance on longwave band??
From: Kevin Purcell <kevinpurcell@pobox.com>
Reply-to: Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment <tentec@contesting.com>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2007 20:34:52 -0700
List-post: <mailto:tentec@contesting.com>

On Sep 26, 2007, at 6:45 PM, Bob McGraw - K4TAX wrote:

Nope, Tentec radios overall have excellent receiver performance.

in partial response to John Ferro

i love this radio, but i have found one negative with the paragon and that is LW reception. i sometimes like to listen to the NDB's (navigational beacons) below the broadcast band, but the paragon II is pretty deaf down here. is this consistant with ten tec radios? do they supress reception down in this area?

One additional point is the RX320 and RX320D both are much less sensitive below 1.8MHz.

The issue on this radio is the input coupling transformer doesn't work as well at LF.

There are several third party mods for this radio for LF performance (basically replace the T3 tranformer with something with higher inductance) and it seems that TT made a similar change in at least some of the RX320D radios to improve MF and LF response by replacing T3 with a small toroid with 9 turns rather than the solenoid core tranformer.

For example,

<http://www.amrad.org/projects/lf/rx/RX320LFMod.pdf>
<http://www.tentecwiki.org/doku.php?id=rx-320>
<http://www.tentecwiki.org/doku.php?id=rx-320d>
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RX320/message/10144?threaded=1&var=1&l=1>

Check the Paragon II circuit diagram. See what they have at the front end of the RX (BCB LPF? not so good tranformers?).

One could see this as a conscious design decision too. The roll off helps when it keeps unwanted MW AM and LF stations out of your HF front end.
--
Kevin Purcell
kevinpurcell@pobox.com


--
73 DE N7WIM / G8UDP
Kevin Purcell
kevinpurcell@pobox.com




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