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Reviews For: NCG Company 15M

Category: QRP Radios (5 watts or less)

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Review Summary For : NCG Company 15M
Reviews: 6MSRP: 329
Description:
15 meter monoband SSB/CW mobile transceiver
Product is in production
More Info: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ncgreflector
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0063.8
W3ATV Rating: 2015-01-03
Cool QRP rig Time Owned: more than 12 months.
A very cool, 1980's technology, QRP monobander. Much better than the earlier NCG15SB. They got this one right. It has a real VFO and tunes nicely. Receiver is a little wide, but very sensitive. A blast to use when the band is open. You truly can work a lot of DX with just a few watts with this rig. Here is a video of it operating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB0I2RgD6RI
K8AG Rating: 2006-09-13
Not bad Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I had one of these for a few years. It had a great NB and sound. The dial had a rubbery quality to it. You seemed to have to push it past where you wanted to go, then hope it came back to the right place.

Not a major problem. Just an annoyance.

73, JP, K8AG
TVMAN Rating: 2006-05-04
Terriffic SSB Radio. Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
In the early 1980's I was living in Oak Park,IL. in a first floor apartment facing a courtway and not allowed an outside antenna. I shopped around and read a review on this "little gem" and the point made was this radio had a booming audio. I bought it new and I believe it cost $250. On my bedroom ceiling I strung a dipole one leg facing North to South and the other facing East to West. I operated SSB only. I was able to connect with a Net in California regularly. I talked to Costa Rica occasionally and in pileups operators would pull me out of the mess not moving their signal strength meters at all, but heard me just fine!
Everyone was just blown away that I was running only 10 watts with an indoor antenna. As fate would have it I needed money to repair the transmission on my car and I sold it! I wish I had it today!
VR2XMQ Rating: 2004-05-23
Great little monoband 15M radio! Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
This nifty mobile radio is quite large in size. It was actually manufactured by the National Panasonic Co. of Japan in the 70s as the RJX-15M.

No frills radio, basic control and partial digital display. Very good RX great received and transmitted audio.

Nice weekend radio to have.
G4VSQ Rating: 2001-04-02
Big but fun and different Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
Big, huge and chunky. Not quite clunky. A good receiver, excellent received audio. Nice transmitted audio as well. My set was bought from a dealer in the UK for a small sum, but it is actually the Japanese model (RJX-715-different name, same set).

It was in fairly poor condition, though just about working. It needed a couple of days work to get it running properly and to clean it up, but it has been reliable in use.

Power output is only about 7 Watts, rather than 10 Watts and this may be due to a failing PA transistor. This hasn't stopped me working the US from the UK on several occasions with my low dipole though.

Using the set for CW is a slight nuisance, using the CW switch and this switch was noisy and needed much cleaning, but we got there in the end.

Thanks again to Caity for her help with info for this set. Maybe we'll have an NCG to NCG QSO one fine day!
KU4QD Rating: 2000-04-12
Great SSB QRP monobander, but awkward for CW and l Time Owned: unknown months.
The NCG Company, best known for importing Comet antennas, also imported this rig in the mid to late 1980's. It was manufactured by National Radio (a/k/a Matsushita or Panasonic), and is the latter of the two 15 meter monobanders NCG sold. While the NCG-15SB was unreliable and horribly awkward to use, this rig is a pleasure for SSB QRP operation and represented a huge step forward from the earlier model. The NCG 15M is really big for a QRP monobander by today's standards. Take something like a Kenwood TS-430S and slice it in half the long way, and you have a good idea of the size. In other words, it's bigger than many of today's multiband rigs. The other big drawback is that you have to manually switch from receive to CW-T (transmit) to use this rig on CW. It was intended to be an SSB mobile rig, and clearly CW is an afterthought, and is more than a bit awkward. There also is absolutely no CW filter, which makes it really a pain on a crowded band. If you are using it on the base an outboard audio filter or DSP can make it quite usable, but that manual T/R switching gets really old. Fortunately, this isn't the case on SSB, and that is where the rig shines. The 15M does has a lot of plusses: a wonderfully sensitive receiver even by today's standards, really nice transmit and receive audio, a large internal speaker, a very effective noise blanker, and a nice simple design. The SSB filter is monolithic, and is adequate, however my rig was improved by replacing it with an after market eight-pole 2.4 khz filter, which really made it into a little performer. The 15M has a red LED display, which is a bit out of date and difficuly to read in with the sun beating down on it if you plan to use the rig mobile. In normal lighting, though, the display is bright and clear. There is no microprocessor in the rig, and it should be relatively easy to service. Mine has had three problems over the years: a mic. cartridge that went south, a capacitor was replaced, and that pesky CW-T switch wore out and also needed to be replaced. Other than RIT and the noise blanker, the rig lacks QRP fighting ability, but as 15 meters is a fairly tame, wide open band, this isn't as bad as it would be on some other bands. Still, again, an outboard DSP can help a lot. Transmit audio has lots of punch, and people will be surprised that you are only running 10 watts if you have one of these. For the die-hard QRPer, a 2 watt low power setting is also provided. I've seen these at hamfests, online, and even on EBay, going for under $100, so even though it's a dated design, for someone looking for an inexpensive 15 meter SSB QRP rig the NCG Company 15M is an excellent choice that performs surprisingly well within it's limitations.