| KC9LDE | Rating:  | 2022-03-31 | | | Just brought out after 15 years | Time Owned: more than 12 months. | | I could not pull up ANY SW stations. Now if I remember the last time I used it about 15 years ago it seemed to work great at night so Ill be tuning in again later tonight. I compared it with my dad's 1955 Zenith Transoceanic and no comparison. Although the Zenith I suspect needs capping and the dial string is broken I was able to tune in some foreign SW stations that the Dx-398 could get. Now it's nightime and its outperforming the Transoceanic. The noise on 6mhz on the Transoceanic is also present on this radio so it's not the radios. As I have very limited experience. I am very pleased that now that it is dark 7pm I am pulling in the stations on this little radio!!! | |
| KG7M | Rating: | 2022-02-16 | | | Excellent Portable | Time Owned: more than 12 months. | I purchased one of these new, when they first arrived on the market, from my local HRO. After several years of use, it slipped off the counter and into a bathtub full of water! I immediately pulled it out, removed the batteries, and dried off the outside. I placed it in a warm location for about a week before replacing the batteries and powering it up. It worked 100%! Now, several years later it's still working great. What a testament to Sangean build quality.
Recently I purchased a second ATS-909 from a Seller on eBay. The Dial Lamps were replaced (incorrectly) with dim blue leds, the Battery Door was missing, and the prior owner had added a Phono Jack on the rear for an External Antenna. So the Seller accepted my low offer. First I replaced the Dial Lamps with Cool White LEDs. I used full size LEDs and filed them down to fit the existing space. Wow, what a difference! Looks fantastic and it's so readable - not like the mod using Blue LEDs. Oh, and I modified the circuit board to use the new LEDs in SERIES. Originally the LEDs are wired in PARALLEL. Modern, off-the-shelf LEDs use less voltage, so having them in series works great. This mod does require some thought, and one trace on the PC Board is opened. Otherwise, the little Sangean works great. As other Reviewers have noted, this portable comes alive with an External Antenna. And, the last owner did the anti-chuff mod. All in all, a great performer with LOTS of memories. I have all my favorite frequencies programmed into memories with corresponding alpha tags for grouping. Lastly, there are two different revisions from Sangean, as far as I can tell. My original model is Goldtone, with a Red Sangean logo. The newer version is a silver color, with a Blue Sangean logo. They both perform the same.
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| N4SZO | Rating: | 2022-01-01 | | | Great Radio with Antenna | Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. | | Great Radio with Antenna I kind of stumbled on to this radio and glad I did. I found this radio while doing research on the latest version (X2) which I ended up buying as well.
The reviews for this radio were so polarizing, I had to have one to see for myself. Based on the reviews here and other places on the net, this radio appeared to anger and frighten
some people, while others saw it as the second coming. I found a clean one on Ebay and it arrived quickly. One thing that most reviews reported is that this radio works best with external antenna for SWL and I would agree with this 100% For me at my location, this is true for all radios I own. I have several Tecson's and the Xdata 808 and they all work better with an external antenna. Under the right conditions they work
fine inside the house but most of the time not. It's not just signal strength/band conditions, but rfi generated inside/around my house from various sources. So be sure and use some kind of external antenna (inside reel, outside longwire) and the radio comes alive. I just ran a quick test between my Tecson 880 and the 398 using 5mhz WWV as reference and using my eve mounted long wire as the antenna. Tonight the band conditions are poor so that
made the test a little bit easier . At first the Tecson had a noticeable edge until I realized I had the rf gain turned way down on the Sangean. Now the Sangean had the edge which surprised me
because the 880 is a much newer radio. It could have been momentary band conditions but the point is the 398/909 is still a good radio in modern times. Negatives : One common issue is that the speaker goes bad with age. My sample was made in November 1998 and I do notice this but only on FM. You can hear some "fuzz" at times on FM so I have ordered a replacement speaker. Backlighting could be brighter. This could be my sample or just the fact that the new version (X2) is so much brighter on the highest setting. Bandwidth - Only Wide / Narrow available with no in between choices. Guess I am spoiled by the newer DSP radios, Bottom line: As long as you get a clean unit off Ebay and use an external antenna, you will be happy. Despite some of its quirks , I like this radio enough that I just found a new one (NOS) and have ordered it | |
| REZA2175 | Rating: | 2021-10-18 | | | Poor sensitivity in sw | Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. | I bought an old ATS 909. Its sensitivity is good in fm & mw but unfortunately it works poorly in sw. I have another simpler analog radio like the sony 7600 which works much better than this radio. For Nan it is very strange why my device in sw is so weak. If anyone has a similar experience, I would be happy to share it with me .
Reza2175h@gmail.com | |
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| KD7RDZI2 | Rating: | 2016-11-20 | | | Long term portable | Time Owned: more than 12 months. | Time owned: 20 years! And this radio works even better now than new. Sensitivity is impressive once you tap the IF and convert the 450Khz IF to 12Khz for any sound-card. To check its sensitivity I made a home-brew signal generator (same schematic of http://www.norcalqrp.org/files/NorCal_S9_Assy_V1.pdf) which should produce a S3 (–107 dBm) signal on 80-40-30-20 meter bands and what I see is about 12db over noise-floor on 80, and at least 25db on 40-30-20 meters. If this is correct, the noise floor is below -130dbm! Notwithstanding the plastic enclosure, it seems also quite unaffected by the noise of a PC. I am using "the Crystal mixer fo=462 KHz use for IF exact 450 kHz" and the software QUISK on Linux for demodulation, IF filtering, DSP, NR etc. Contrary to IQ SDRs you do not need a stereo input, just any input of your sound-card should suffice!
The only issue in 20years were the volume and RF gain control that become scratchy and the rotary frequency encoder erratic. After I sprayed some Isopropyl alcohol, all these controls and the encoder became like new!!! ----------------------
Earlier 4-star review posted by KD7RDZI2 on 2006-05-22 I gave the 4 stars simply because I don't want to change the average rating.
The major drawbacks of this receivers are:
1) High price compared to better or similar sets such as DEGEN DE1103.
2) Poor front-end filtering and prone to overloading.
However it has very good qualities as well:
1) frequency stability.
2) low noise, I guess from the synthetizer with a low phase noise.
3) good image rejection I guess due to the double conversion design with the First IF well beyond 30Mhz and the second at 450Khz.
4) Although it is a compact design there is room enough to make a second IF output without drilling any hole if the telescopic antenna is removed! Here we are! I did get IF-DSP and AM-DRM-SSB-CW and even FM in the shortwave bands with a Laptop (pentium 4)! Here are the steps: 1) I followed the instructions at http://www.drmrx.org/mods/DRM909.pdf to see where I could locate the second IF at 450Khz. I removed the telescopic antenna and placed a RCA connector and used small RG174 cable.
2) in a small shielded box I placed a Crystal mixer fo=462 KHz use for IF exact 450 kHz which I bought at http://www.sat-schneider.de/DRM/DRM.htm.
Before the mixer I placed in series two wide Murata filters F-450K-P2 which match well the mixer and provide excellent analog filtering to the third external mixer.
3) I connected the mixer to the soundblaster of the laptop and used the DREAM software downloaded at http://www.sat-schneider.de/DRM/DRM.htm. Well, performance is outstanding. I could get a very clean sound, perfect DSP filtering at IF, IF noise reduction, Digital AGC and DRM and FM reception. Basically what this radio becomes after this modification is a software defined radio. Only the stages up to the second conversion are used and modified to have a third conversion. Demodulation and audio is made by the Laptop. To improve the frontend I made a preselector placing in series a variable 10-500pf about capacitor and several selectable axial fixed inductors ranging from very high values up to small values such as 10microH. It is a simple design but dramatically reduces overloading antennas. | |
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| N4YX | Rating: | 2013-07-20 | | | Great Portable SW Rcvr | Time Owned: more than 12 months. | | I've owned both the 398 & the 909. Very good all around portable SW radios. I've also owned many Grundig YB400 & other Radio Shack SW portables. I like 'em all but favor the 398/909 due to all the nice features coupled with great performance as a portable sw rcvr. | |
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| K6ELV | Rating: | 2010-12-17 | | | SUPERB on MW | Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. | I found this radio at a flea market for a really cheap price. The speaker was blown and the antenna was broken. I replaced the speaker and the antenna and the radio is as good as new, and sounds good too. I am glad I found it and purchased it.
The sensitivity of this thing is absolutely SUPERB on medium wave without even using an external antenna. During the day I was able to pull in a station from Boise Idaho (I am in California). At night it is even better, every single frequency has a station that comes in intelligibly, and there is never any bleed over from much stronger local stations like there is on other AM receivers. This thing can get reception of AM stations clearly in the fringe areas. I am picking up stations that I have never been able to pick up before with other radios. As for FM the sensitivity is good also, I was able to get an FM station clearly from a city that is 120 miles away that I couldn't pick up at all before! The selectivity however could be better because I was hearing some splatter on the band from adjacent stations that doesnt occur in my other FM radio. I would pick up FM 96.1 all the way from 95.3 to 97.7mhz which made it IMPOSSIBLE to pull in weaker stations from that range because that stronger station would just swamp them. Other than that the FM quality is pretty good. I like the "RDS" feature too. It is nice for quickly identifying the type of station when you are just scanning around, and is also good for identifying a song you don't know the name of. As for shortwave it is pretty good too, I was able to hear activity on some of the amateur bands as well as some of the stronger shortwave stations like Radio Havana Cuba with just the telescoping whip antenna inside of a house. When I go outside the SW station gets clear and I can pick up much more activity on the amateur bands. Unfortunutely on Longwave I cannot receive anything but noise, but this is probably expected since I was just using the telescoping whip antenna indoors. Other things I like are the switches for narrow/wide, the switch for music or news, and the RF gain knob. They help to reduce noise and hear the station more clearly. I like how they have an ext. antenna jack also because it is a must for receiving longwave and weaker shortwave stations. If you can find a used one cheap then GET IT. You'll be glad you did. | |
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