Wednesday, September 14, 2016

FX-9A in action (well not really) against other rigs






I did a short write up about the FX-9A the other day and just wanted to follow that up with a video of it against a few of my other rigs sharing the same antenna and running the other rigs without a PREamp on and even turning on the ATTenuator to compare :
The rigs I put the FX-9A up against were
Vertex VX1700
Elecraft KX2
Xiegu X108G

Have a listen and then you tell me, the FX-9A gets bombed by them all including the Xiegu X108G with ATT on and PRE off.

https://youtu.be/XrO4SWfnuOI

73 all
Fred
VE3FAL

Monday, September 12, 2016

FX-9A once again......


FX-9A not a radio for everyone









Finally pulled the FX-9A out from under the desk to give it a whirl once again on 20 meters since the bands are somewhat lively tonight, hooked the paddle up, power, adjusted to 18 wpm , set power output to low (5w) and called CQ using the windom. Sent out a few CQ's, was I being heard ? Reverse beacon says I was:

But that was not all that was hearing me, aside from the quirky cw sidetone from the speaker, missed characters while sending cw and the YL yelling from the living room "hey what are you doing in there" my dual band VHF/UHF radio was actually breaking squelch on the SO-50 downlink UHF frequency whilst I was sending code with the FX-9A. 
I have wanted to put a SDR on and check for spurious emissions from the FX-9A but have not had a chance to do that yet. We do not have cable or satellite tv but only use internet based tv such as Netflix and Android TV, but the FX-9A was sending out crazy lines across the tv at the 5 watt setting, plus the UHF rigs squelch being triggered, this tends to tell me the transmitter is not very clean, even at low power settings.

These radios are way overpriced, poorly designed and made, and no firmware updates are available like with the Elecraft models or even the Xiegu X108G, which is still by far a superior radio to the FX-9A. The LNR radios are probably 3 times the radio these made in the bedroom radios can ever be.

I have seen others videos and reviews on this radio and others seem happy , but they are way behind any of the others, add that to no warranty, replacement policies and no paperwork or instructions I would not recommend these radios to anyone that wants to operate with a signal that is clean and will keep you out of trouble. It also tends to overheat very quickly, even at low power. 

73
Fred 
VE3FAL