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Reviews For: MFJ 94-Series

Category: QRP Radios (5 watts or less)

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Review Summary For : MFJ 94-Series
Reviews: 75MSRP: 239.95
Description:
SSB Travel Radio (CW optional)
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.mfjenterprises.com/index.htm
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00754.4
KX4TT Rating: 2004-09-21
Nice portable rig!! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I purchased mine with the CW adaptor and have used it with both a vertical and a dipole cut for 20. The receive audio is crisp and clean - it is suprisingly good for such an inexpensive rig. Also, the transmit audio has gotten high marks from the other ops; they comment on the "big sound" of this little gem. This rig does need a headphone jack, though. The other "bad news" is that determining your frequency can be a bit tricky, but a quick calibration against a frequency counter or a good station receiver will keep the "pink slips" away!! This is a great "weekend at the beach" or "overnight" rig - throw a small PS or a couple of gel-cells and a decent antenna in the bag with this rig and HAVE FUN!!!
N5EIL Rating: 2004-07-18
does what it says Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Great for portable or camping. Light and doesn't require but an antenna and a power supply and your on the air. No frills, no mess.

The reciever is very well done. and extremely sharp. no shaky fingers with this rig. I got mine used and in great condition, wouldn't trade it for anything.

N5EIL, Neil
KC8HXO Rating: 2004-06-08
Great little rig! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
For what it is, it really is a great performer. We used one last year at Field Day, and made contacts with it when 100W had problems getting thru! Light, and virtually indestructible. Battery friendly, too! 73 all, Greg, KC8HXO
VE3WMB Rating: 2004-01-11
No frills SSB Monobander that works Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have had my MFJ9420 SSB Travel Radio for a couple of years now and I really like it. It is a simple rig that works extremely well and has a very low RX current drain (109 ma/hr) allowing for many hours of portable operation from a small gell cell. I have even managed to break a few pileups with this rig and a decent antenna. The speech processor gives the transmitter a bit of extra oomph, making this rig sound more like a radio running about 25W.

The one complaint that I had with this rig was that the analog dial made it difficult at times to figure out what frequency you were on, as resolution is at best 5KHZ. My solution to this "problem" was to install a Small Wonder Labs Freq-Mite . The Freq-Mite is a PIC Microprocessor-based frequency counter with Morse
Annunciation.

Anyone interested doing the same can check out my website for details at :

http://www.qsl.net/ve3wmb/9420mod.html
VE7STB Rating: 2003-12-30
Perfect for camping Time Owned: more than 12 months.
My reason for giving a 5/5 rating is that my initial expectations were quite low.I purchased this unit in 1995 and have had no trouble at all (purchased with the optional CW module).Although there is a bit of drift (which settles down after a few minutes),its quite manageable.I've worked quite a bit of DX with nothing more than a simple dipole.Had a slight vibration during audio peaks but was cured with a piece of rubber tape near a screw hole on the cover.I just put it in a backpack or duffle bag with the dipole and battery.Works well just about anywhere. I miss the big rig after a few days but this is just the ticket when I go camping.
CT1EHO Rating: 2002-10-11
Simple is beutifull!! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I got my MFJ-9420 radio new from WSPLC in the UK, they send it by post to South of portugal where I live, It tooke some time to arrive in the ocasion, so I miss to carrying it with me in my 2001 vacations to North of Portugal has I planned.
When I unpack the radio I was surprised about the overall quality of the small transceiver, very well made and neat case! It reminded me the old days radio equipment, no plastic look!! The analog S meter works very fine its easy to read due to the nice size, the dial button is smoth to operate, but it takes some time to get used to the tunnig rate specialy the SSB pitch of the received stations, it needs very slow movement of the dial, but thats OK.
The direct convertion receiver is really sensitive, I never realized how good could be a receiver like this the low noise front-end based on the NE602 ship is really OK, its not much noisy as some could expect, the narrow IF 10Mhz cascade crystal filter does an acceptable job in separating strong adjacent signals, the announced selectivity is in my opinion well acomplished in this small beauty, OK its not a fancy DSP state of the art transceiver but overall it gets the job donne at least in the not so crowded 20m band.
Its really amanzing what can be donne with the 12 Watts available from this small box, one thing is for sure, the RF syllabic speech processor works great, I allways get nice audio reports from the stations I contact with, if I dont tell them, they guess Im working with some 80´s Yaesu.

I´ve been workind many DX with only a dipole antenna at about 10 meters high in the back yard of the house, here from the South of Portugal regular contacts can be donne to North America and Canada as well the usual European stations.

There is no extra heavy power suplly nor heat dissipation, I can be working for days on a 12V car battery, its really fun... Its ecologic!! this transceiver is a good choice for those who use reneuable energy systems.

Now about the less good things in the transceiver,
being a VFO transceiver, its expectable some small frequency drift specially at cold power on, even during transmission the drift is very acceptable, there is some old equipment being a lot worst than the 9420.

In the transceiver construction detail the only less good thing is the mic connector, it would be perfect if MFJ would use instead of the 6 pin DIN connector, a regular metallic mic plug.

By last I think the transceiver is a little over priced specially here in Europe, but for those who apreciate nice QRP tradicional small rigs its Ok.

I really recommend this small and nice piece of radio equipment.

K3ZD Rating: 2002-05-14
bad sidetone Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I've got one with the CW mod added and the sidetone is really lame. There is a pot that's supposed to adjust the level, but all it does is change the tone a little. Other than that, great little rig. If anyone can comment on the sidetone problem I'd appreciate it.
Mark - K3ZD markw51@yahoo.com
W6DGR Rating: 2002-03-21
mfj 9420 ssb Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
With a leased vehicle. It is a big no no to drill or even punch a hole on any part of it. So instead of taking my other radio out of the other truck and travel 1600 mile from whidbey island washington to san diego ca. I decided to try out the MFJ 9420 ssb from radio depot in seattle. Since it's compact and it does not take much space in my SUV. After tuning my ham stick on a 5" magnet mount with swr of 1.5:1. I was surprise to talk to most of my friends in california on 20m with 10 watts right outside my appartment with a signal report of 5X9 audio quality was great. or the propagation is just open from my side? The best part of it is i plug it via the cigarette lighter and the price. The only thing i need is to place a ferrite choke on the power cable to lessen the noise of the engine.
AB9GO Rating: 2002-03-10
A good little single band SSB radio Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I'll give the radio's design a 5, but the support and quality control from MFJ a 1-2. Mine suffered from extreme drift. I called MFJ and the " We never heard of that before. " line was used. I contacted Rich Littlefield K1BQT the designer of the radio and explained what had happened. He said that there was a small batch of MFJ 9420s that had an incorrect L3 VFO inductor. He gave me a contact at MFJ and in a week I had a new L3. It took care of the problem. There were three other faults with the radio right out of the box. The transmit LED was installed backwards. The CW adaptor was not working. There was a broken trace from the 20/40 meter jumper on the CW adaptor board. Lastly the side tone buzzer emitted a tone at all times. Fixed that too! All simple, stupid stuff that should have been caught at MFJ. Who is inspector T.H. ? Was he was asleep or something?!

I can recommend this radio to anyone as far as it being a good design. However, if you buy one check it out toughly. You may be getting someone else’s problems. It is a terrible shame that MFJ does not fix their quality control issues.

On the good side it has a good clear receiver, great xmit audio, RF speech processor, 10 watts RF output ( not exactly QRP ), a rugged case that uses PIM nuts for the screws. I can usually work most anyone I hear and I run it mobile with a 20 meter hamstick type antenna. Most people can't believe I am only running 10 watts! After I got all the bugs out of it I like it a lot. You can find it discounted at a number of outlets. Mine was $209.00 with the mike, but with all the quality problems the price should have been lower by about $50.00.

Randy KB8ASO
KF4DVG Rating: 2001-11-28
9406 Cool Radio! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Finally received my 9406 in 1997 after waiting a couple of weeks for delivery (or to be built?) direct from MFJ and then I ordered the CW module and installed it. Tried my luck with a dipole at 20' then I moved to England for the next 3 years. I had a blast while only using a dipole! You won't find any bells and whistles on this rig, but it will give you lots of fun! Managed to work almost all of Italy, DX to Norway, Russia, Y land and down into Spain. Now I am back in the states and using a copper tube J pole at 20' and have 31 states and 75 grids confirmed. Even managed to work Chile with a mag mount in my truck while mobile! The face panel silk screen is rubbing off, but hey- when the band is open- I don't have any problems finding the DX window freq! I can just about work anyone that I can hear. Not alot of power, but alot of FUN! Also- I have had alot of great remarks on the transmit audio during my QSO's. One minor thing-A pair of headphones is a must during weak conditions- but when the band is open- the audio finally loud enough to hear over the internal speaker.