Topband: Re: dedicated topband transceiver

[Steve Ireland]

G'day

Poor IF gain distribution seems to be a common problem in several
commercial HF transceivers produced during the last decade. 

I had a pretty poor opinion of the IF gain distribution of my off-the shelf
FT1000MP - which was fixed up by adding the INRAD board.  Now my RF
training is only technician level and that was over 25 years ago...

Maybe Tom W8JI and/or George W2VJN/INRAD could write a basic checklist of
design suggestions for the amateur radio HF transceiver makers (i.e.
generating the transmitted CW signals through a 500Hz crystal filter), this
could be placed at contesting.com and we could all endorse/"sign it" (i.e.
by we, I mean members of the various contesting.com reflectors like this
one, etc) and it could be sent as a petition to the managing directors and
technical directors of Yaesu, Kenwood, ICOM and Ten-Tec. 

Now, if we could get an endorsement of several thousand callsigns/e-mail
addresses, it would at least show that serious radio amateurs are serious
in wanting to help radio manufacturers make a better product (and maybe at
least one of them might sign up W8JI or W2VJN as a consultant on their next
HF design).

Then we might get a really superior (and good value-for-money) HF
transceiver - with great 160m CW and SSB performance - on the commercial
market.

Vy 73,

Steve, VK6VZ


>With no RF amp, it is possible to get into the -130dB or better 
>range on sensitivity. But the biggest problems are actually poor 
>filtering, poor gain distribution, and simple design errors.
>
>73, Tom W8JI
W8JI@contesting.com