Manager


Manager - NA4M
Manager Notes

Reviews For: AEA VSB-70

Category: ATV equipment

eMail Subscription

Registered users are allowed to subscribe to specific review topics and receive eMail notifications when new reviews are posted.
Review Summary For : AEA VSB-70
Reviews: 1MSRP:
Description:
AEA's second generation ATV tx/rx unit. 2 channel w/1 watt out on 70cm. Canon connector in front,tx/rx button, saturation adjustment. Real time picture monitoring. RCA Jacks on rear
Product is in production
More Info: http://
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0015
N2ZD Rating: 2004-03-05
Fantastic picture, crisp audio,super RX! Time Owned: more than 12 months.

While perusing the reviews here on Eham, I was quite shocked by not seeing a review on this unit under the ATV heading. I bought one of these new back in the early 90's. I constructed a K1FO Yagi, put it up on the roof with a rotator, and added some 9913 coax and an ATV-100 amp and I was on the air. I put my call out over 434mhz and began racking up new friends and contacts.
Here in the Northeast there were quite a few guys active and I was always complimented by them on my picture and signal (not my face though...Hmmm) The front canon connector made it easy to use video camera's from the 1980's with this unit as it was the standard for separate cam and video packages from back then. The unit still had RCA Jacks on the rear allowing for the later variety of video cameras to be used with it. This unit had nice clean audio and an uncannily clear picture with near broadcast quality color and sound.
The RX was something else, I was pulling in some far away contacts with this unit and grabbing their audio no problem when conditions were favorable. It definitely was an exercise in engineering by AEA. Often 1 watt was good in the winter and 80-120 mile contacts were common, NY (my qth) to PA,CT and Long Island (sometimes with a few watts (small uhf amp) or running the amp).

I dont suggest opening it and doing any mods, AEA is long gone, some of the stuff inside looks like its from outer space. I have two of these and both have two different freqs in them, one unit does the first two freqs and is peaked for that portion and the other is peaked for the upper portion of the band (434 and 439.25)The unit will use the tx xtals on rx as well, but I find that its better to use the rx tuner for zeroing in on your ATV buddies, some of the other gear will tx a little off from center frequency making the tuning knob a better choice for clarity reasons.
If you can find one of these, its a keeper. There is an earlier version with no VSB (blue lettering on the front) I've only seen a couple of them though. If you can find one and buy it, you will most certainly enjoy it. BTW, AEA offered a mast mounted amplifier with a preamp built in.. Good luck finding one of those too..