Venturer Multiband Receiver
A. Satish Pai
Has anyone used the "Venturer Multiband Receiver" supplied by Haverhills
of San Francisco? An ad for it says it has 10 bands, AM and FM, with
a range of 4 MHz to 12 MHz. What is its selectivity/sensitivity like?
Would it be a reasonable set for a beginner? It costs $99.95.
-Satish.
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Internet: p...@cs.yale.edu | A. Satish Pai
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Ralph Brandi
>Has anyone used the "Venturer Multiband Receiver" supplied by Haverhills
>of San Francisco? An ad for it says it has 10 bands, AM and FM, with
>a range of 4 MHz to 12 MHz. What is its selectivity/sensitivity like?
>Would it be a reasonable set for a beginner? It costs $99.95.
Every review I've ever seen of this set has lambasted it for its
poor performance. It looks a lot like the set I started SWLing with
in 1976; I stayed with that set for all of two months before I got
frustrated and got something better. Larry Magne, noted receiver
reviewer, tears this radio to shreds for offering a way into
shortwave listening that is destined to turn anyone who uses it off
to the hobby for good.
You'd be better off spending the money on one of the cheap Sony or
Panasonic portables, or spending a little more money and getting a
Sangean ATS-803 for $200.
--
Ralph Brandi ra...@mtune.att.com att!mtune!ralph
Work flows toward the competent until they are submerged.
Allan Courtney
>of San Francisco? An ad for it says it has 10 bands, AM and FM, with
>a range of 4 MHz to 12 MHz. What is its selectivity/sensitivity like?
>Would it be a reasonable set for a beginner? It costs $99.95.
Avoid this unit at all costs. Larry Magne of Passport fame has reviewed this
turkey several times. It is Single conversion and plagued by images and
other spurious signals. The $100.00 price tag is highway robbery.
Junk like this gives the hobby a bad reputation.
Sangean has some very nice portables for under $100 that put this one to shame.
Allan
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Allan.C...@lunatix.UUCP aco...@lunatix.UUCP
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Donald P Perley
>In article <PAI.90Ma...@yale-zoo2-lincoln.cs.yale.edu> pai-s...@cs.yale.edu writes:
>>
>>Has anyone used the "Venturer Multiband Receiver"
>Avoid this unit at all costs. Larry Magne of Passport fame has reviewed this
>turkey several times. It is Single conversion and plagued by images and
>other spurious signals. The $100.00 price tag is highway robbery.
>Junk like this gives the hobby a bad reputation.
I'm not trying to boost the Venturer, but I think you must be over
flaming it in one respect. If it is single conversion, then how can
it have images? The image normally differs from the "real" received
frequency by twice the intermediate frequency. With single conversion
you don't have an IF.
-don perley
per...@trub.crd.ge.com
Larry Johnson
>I'm not trying to boost the Venturer, but I think you must be over
>flaming it in one respect. If it is single conversion, then how can
>it have images? The image normally differs from the "real" received
>frequency by twice the intermediate frequency. With single conversion
>you don't have an IF.
Sorry, but "single conversion" here refers to a single-conversion super-
heterodyne receiver, that is, one with a single IF. While I've never
used the Venturer, I've seen enough other single-conversion sets to
guess where problem is.
In a "cheap" receiver, the IF filters, those that give the receiver its
selectivity, are typically coil-and-capacitor affairs, rather than
crystal or ceramic. This means that the IF must be kept to a relatively
low frequency. 455 kHz is usually used, because then they can use the
filters designed for standard AM broadcast-band transistor radios. Thus
the image is 910 kHz above (or below) the frequency to which the
receiver is tuned. This is not such a big difference in the shortwave
bands, making it hard to filter the image without filtering the desired
frequency. Now, if the receiver covers, for example, 4 MHz to 12 MHz in
a single band, the situation is even worse, since the image-rejecting
filter must be tunable as well. For example, it must reject the image
of WWV on 10 MHz when it's tuned to 9.090 MHz, but must not reject it
when it's tuned to 10 MHz. The result, especially when done "cheaply,"
is just not good at all. That's why this sort of set always has all
sorts of whistles that vary in pitch as you tune across the band.
Again, I've never used the Venturer, so I can't say that any of this is
true for it. But it has been typical of other receivers in that price
range. That's why, IMO, it's better to spend a bit more for a better-
designed receiver. If the cost were really a big problem, I'd try to
pick up a used tube-type communications receiver, like the Hammerlund I
recently parted with. While they are much less convenient than modern
receivers, and require learning a bit more to use and maintain, their
performance can be quite acceptable at a very reasonable price.
All this is solely my personal opinion and experience; take it for what
it's worth.
73, Larry, WB1FOF
--
Larry Johnson
FiberCom, Inc. INTERNET: l...@fibercom.com
P.O. Box 95093 UUCP: uunet!fibercom!lrj
Raleigh, NC 27625 PHONE: +1 919-790-9257