| K5NJP |
Rating:  |
2021-02-09 | |
| what a GREAT RIG! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I was looking for a fairly small, full power HF rig to take out. My other rig is a kenwood TS590SG. Through the years I’ve had hundreds of rigs, from EF Johnson equipment way before synth and solid state to DX class super duper rigs. What I wanted with the Alinco was something “decent”. I can’t stand this modern DSP negative modulation crapola. With respect to the finals, the feedline, the heatsink and the fan, negative modulation is utterly stupid. Let’s make the carrier way hotter than the modulation. Hmmm, negative swing, negative punch. Yup, that’s brilliant. What detector and RX chain wouldn't love that?? Then there’s the modern DSP rigs that “allow” some positive modulation on AM, but if and only if it’s in the right spectrum with the right filter and the right crest factor and the right tonality. Again YUCK. I don’t know when we became SO panic stricken with modulation that we don’t dare dip above 50%. This is silly. And on this subject the Alinco rig SHINES BRIGHTLY!!! Out of the box, I got 50W into a dummy on FM and AM. Not exactly the 100W advertised….but for what I paid, I’ll gladly have a look. Easy enough. Follow the manual, run the carrier up, run the audio up, then there’s a pot for carrier suppression. OMG, I have a rig that can produce decent AM. My oh my! SSB power came up with audio setting. Beautiful envelopes. AM looks great on spec an. Even with REAL modulation, total occupied bandwidth is about the same as the wimpy negative modulation rigs. As for the receiver, it’s so darn nice. The DSP rigs might be able to pull a signal out of taller grass or deeper mud, but everything I wanted to hear, I heard. The filtering was superb. I’m not asking for a brick wall, but I do expect a little range. Beautiful receive, full, solid, with good bandwidth. Initial alignment is great. Lock on to a carrier, flip to USB, flip to LSB, both at zero beat. That’s good enough for me. Not going to spend a whole heck of a lot of time on IP3 hocus pocus. I heard a lot more with this rig than I’ve heard with others at 5x the price. The power button turns it off and on quickly….when is the last time a super duper dsp rig did that. Pres the button, wait, wait, then on or off…..again YUCK. Mods were all easy and quick. Although the surface mount pots are on the order of 0402 smt resistors. Tiny little devils for sure! FR4 boards, decent construction, soldering looks great. I can’t say enough good stuff about this rig. In closing, I’m buying another one as soon as I can. Now I have to break out the VNA, make some loading coils and build up a reasonable octopus style antenna array to cover the bands. What a great experience. If I were blindfolded, I’d value the rig at 3x or 4x the asking price. As for software, compatibility, interface….I honestly don’t care. As for digital modes, copy 5x9, qrz,bee boop. know what I’m saying? I might upgrade the mic element to something with a little more range. The daydream is to get a Shure SM58 cartridge and build up a little surfboard parametric EQ with LF shelf with that new little AD compressor/limiter IC. I think I could get it all on a board about the size of the mic cartridge. Power might be 3mA or so at the VCC provided down the mic cable. Build in some hunka filtering to keep any stray RF out…..yeah….that would be nice.
PS: looks like some sort of direct impingement cooling on the finals. baseplate is plenty thick, but I wouldn't advise FM'ing or AM'ing at the full 100W carrier for extended periods. I'm using the 10W setting for AM and it's positively wonderful. On the 100W mode, the carrier suppression pot drops the carrier down quite a bit, but still, don't push the thermals. If you don't need it, don't use it.
PPS: if you are with corporate, I took the cookie, the spam and the survey already. I bought the car insurance you were selling and I know of your policy and how you "can't, won't and don't". yes, that's right, nonresponse is always best. |
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| KG4RUL |
Rating: |
2020-12-31 | |
| Excellent value for the money |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I have a DX-SR8T which is used with a, now out of production, LDG AL100 automatic tuner.
To list the salient features:
• Covers HF (1.8 MHz to 28 MHz) amateur radio bands in SSB, AM, FM, and CW modes at 100W output
• General coverage receiver - Covers 135 kHz to 30 MHz in all mode
• Direct frequency input - Provided with numerical keys to input frequency directly without using the dial
• Direct recall of last frequency used in each band
• Front speaker - Powerful and clear audio with 2 W Audio Ampli?er
• Front jacks - Connecting easily with an external speaker and headphones
• Speech compressor - Increases the average power of the transmitted signal by amplifying the weak part of your speech - It helps communicating in poorer propagation conditions or in pile-ups
• AGC (Automatic Gain Control) – Selectable Fast or Slow
• NB (Noise Blanker) - Suppresses pulse noise generated by car ignition etc.
• RIT (Receiver Incremental Tuning) - Allows you to fine-tune to another station's transmitting frequency without shifting your transmission signal
• XIT (Transmitter Incremental Tuning) - Used to help your communicating station's reception of your signal while you stay tuned to his frequency
• Versatile interference eliminators - The IF SHIFT function; Built-in audio ?lter as standard for CW; and RF attenuator/ Preamplifier, all effectively help to reject unwanted signals
• CW operation with internal electronic keyer - Enables you to receive CW signals from either the upper or lower side of the carrier frequency - Selectable sidetone and pitch, -FULL BREAK-IN (QSK), - SEMI BREAK-IN (7 steps) - AUTO BREAK-IN (delay time automatically adjusted with keying speed)
• 600 memory channels - A total of 600 channels can be registered in three banks: 200 channels per bank - Each stores mode, filter, split frequencies, AGC, attenuator (or pre-amp), noise-blanker settings and more
What more do you need for a basic rig? |
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| W5GNB |
Rating: |
2020-12-30 | |
| Great SIMPLE rig ~~ |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
For the money, this is a Great buy. Works well and is a lot of fun to operate. It performs well as a basic rig.
The drawbacks are:
1~ the noise blanker introduces a fuzziness in the audio, especially on CW.
2~ The power output setting is Not variable, it is Fixed at 100%, Medium, and Low. This makes the rig difficult to operate with a linear amplifier. |
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| KB6HRT |
Rating: |
2020-09-26 | |
| NICE! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Been sitting on the fence for about 18 months on buying the DX-SR8T am an older HAM hearing loss, This radio works very well at the QTH, load and very clear receive,
100+watts output easy to use controls, big easy to read readout, Sleep Timer, pulls in lots of Short Wave signals real well could not be happier....................kb6hrt |
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| WD0FIA |
Rating: |
2020-09-25 | |
| A lot of radio at a bargain price! |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I bought my first Alinco DX-SR8T over 4 years ago. I bought it because of the huge removable display so I could run it mobile. Before long I had 3 of them running in different vehicles.
This is a excellent entry level radio. It is very basic, but since they are selling for only $469 new in September 2020, you can't go wrong. |
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| N9GUE |
Rating: |
2020-09-20 | |
| Pleased with rig. |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
Use this rig for digital modes. Use KF5INZ interface. Large display. Easy to use band switch buttons. Now using Rigblaster Nomic interface. It also does well with my Signalink USB interface.Built like a tank. No problems with controls. Yes there are some features needed like Easy Mic gain control and no ALC meter.Rig puts out 115 watts. Overall needs a few features not included but pleased with price and performance.
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| KD8ZKW |
Rating: |
2020-08-30 | |
| Good value.for.the.money |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| I've made good.contacts.with this.radio. The only downside I can see.is the stock Mic. It sucks.no.Lows and all highs. So I bought a Mic off eBay. Its.a studio.desk Mic. The maker of this.mic and seller is.w2eny on eBay. The Mic works.great. So if you've bought one of these radios. I highly suggest.w2eny Mic you can buy the alinco.desk.Mic but that's 119.00. W2why is 44.00 if you buy ptt cable 20.00 for that. So your talking 64.00 compared.to a 119.00. Bottom line the radios works.great.especially for the cost. |
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| AB1GO |
Rating: |
2019-04-08 | |
| Nice 100W HF amp.. |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I bought one of these for work, because it was a low cost option to get a 100 W amplifier for the 13.56 MHz ISM band. You can feed the exciter into a TMP coax connector on the PA board and the amplifier will work fine (select 14 MHz to have the nearest low pass filter). The rig does not care that you are feeding the PA a signal it's not generating. But note that the protection will not work (it works by cutting the internal exciter RF during overload or overtemp). I recommend transformer isolation, otherwise you get ground loop problems with this coax.
I also tried WSJT-X with a wire hanging out the window.. it works fine, but I did not test this thoroughly.
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|
| KF6WND |
Rating: |
2017-09-23 | |
| Great little rig. |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
I bought this rig in late spring of 2017 for use at our summer home in upstate New York. I added the AL-100 antenna tuner, a BHI dsp filter plus an external speaker, an MFJ-822 SWR/POWER meter and a D104 microphone which I modified with an electret cartridge.
This rig has proven to have a great receiver and transmitter. In barefoot mode the power output steps are not a problem. However, it would be hard to use with a linear amplifier where continuous variable drive levels are required. I really like my rig and station setup. |
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| KB3ZUO |
Rating: |
2017-09-05 | |
| Good buy |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I opted for this instead or the SR9T because with the SDR feature you need to buy a SDR to monitor 2 bands anyway. You can get one for about 100 dollars at Ham Radio outlet with good specs. It is a good radio. I use it mainly for listening until i get a good antenna set up. With a MfJ 1622 apartment antenna it gets very many signals on a good contest night. The location of the antenna is poor and can receive but only contact limited directions being in the middle of town with homes nearby but it can be used. I have had only one problem with the ldg tuner but I just had to reset it and no problem. I sometimes use it with a Timewave ANC-4 electrical interference filter. I would recommend using a pretuned antenna if you can afford it though or homebrew a single band dipole and make an ocf dipole that tunes 6-80 It does do digital I use a MFJ -1260 mic splitter but all of the accessories took 2 years to get. It also has a split feature. The store I bought it off of said it didn't do digital but it does with the correct signalink and the SLUSB8R plug. The LDG-Al 100 tuner has better specs than the competition and when i mistuned without an antenna it just needed reset. Some say it is not a contest radio but they say that for not wanting an inexpensive radio. |
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