Manager


Manager - NA4M
Manager Notes

Reviews For: WinRadio G39DDC

Category: Receivers: General Coverage

eMail Subscription

Registered users are allowed to subscribe to specific review topics and receive eMail notifications when new reviews are posted.
Review Summary For : WinRadio G39DDC
Reviews: 1MSRP: 4600
Description:
The WiNRADiO WR-G39DDC 'EXCELSIOR' series offers high-performance HF/VHF/UHF/SHF software-defined receivers with a frequency range from 9 kHz to 3500 MHz, with two independent channels of 4 MHz wide instantaneous bandwidth available for recording and further digital processing, plus a 16 MHz wide real-time spectrum analyzer.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.winradio.com/home/g39ddc.htm
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0015
N3LK Rating: 2012-04-09
Amazing Technology, Lots of Fun . . . Still Some Work To Do Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
NOTE: At the time of this review the WinRadio G39DDC has only had limited North American availability for a few months, so I expect this “Excelsior” HF/VHF/UHF product will probably take the same route as the earlier G31/33 “Excalibur” HF SDRs and software defined improvements and features will quickly emerge.

I spent about 10 days with the WinRadio G39DDC and am very impressed with the technology and feature set, but there is still a little work to do to create a truly amazing product. My experience includes 40 years as a Ham, and owning most of the top HF and UHF/VHF rigs over the years (IC9000, IC8500, AR5000, AR5001d, FTDX9000, Flex5000A, BCD996XT, G31DDC, etc).

The current WinRadio ads for G39DDC ask the question, “is it a receiver or a spectrum analyzer?” My impression are it is 1st a great spectrum analyzer with an excellent VHF/UHF receiver attached . . . with a HF receiver still needing some work! The analyzer and spectrum scan features are amazing, and may cause me to sell all my other VHF/UHF receivers and scanners! The searching options are truly professional grade; they work great and are practical for most any conceivable application. It can scan 80,000 channels over 1Ghz spectrum in 1 second!

G39DDC VHF/UHF receiver is both high performing, extremely flexible and sounds great! Above 50Mhz thru 3500Mhz it performance much better than my beloved IC9000 and is far more useful with the spectrum analyzer/logger/activity feature set. Using the G39DDC is like going from radio to TV, where you can see what you are listening to and what you are not!

The G39DDC allows you to record up to 4 MHz of spectrum at a time, and the go back and listen to every communication that occurred during the recording time. You can latterly record 20M, 80M, 40M and more for an hour, then spend days listening to every QSO! Also, you can have it store the past 10 minutes of a spectrum, so if you get in on the end of the QSO you can go back to the beginning. OK, not sure how practical this is . . . but it is Very Cool!

Unfortunately the HF receiver suffers from serious front-end overload and without a MW filter (or proper attenuation) dramatically cripples its performance. The manufacture warns about this problem, but has yet to offer a practical solution (e.g., the G31DDC has a built in MW front end filter). With protection, the HF receiver performs well and is quite useable for CW, SSB, AM, etc.

High Price . . . Is it worth It? G39DDC is currently priced around $4,600 US, which for a SDR could be considered as HIGH. Actually, if you can afford and use its features, it is really a reasonably good buy! A IC9500 is around $13,000, the new AOR AR5001 is well over $5,500 with basic additions, a 20 year old IC9000 can bring $3,000 on eBay, and most high-end Ham rigs are $5,000-12,000. Heck, a decent spectrum analyzer can cost $7,000-20,000!

Bottom Line: I did not like to part with the money, but love the G39DDC and looking forward to new software releases to fix flaws and add more features. Take a closer look and see if it is for you!