Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Eton E1 First Impressions

Well it didn't arrive on Monday. Or Tuesday. But Wednesday! It is s/n 3609, in other words part of the recall.

The first thing I usually do when I get a new radio, is to measure its sensitivity. To date I do not recall having seen sensitivity figures on the E1, except Eton's own specifications (Less than 2.0uV for the whole tuning range, 1000 Hz, 30% mod but bandwidth not stated. 7 kHz?)

So I pulled out my signal generator and AC voltmeter and started measuring. I was stunned. I had to go through the setup again and again to make sure that I hadn't done anything that could make the results incorrect. I used slow AGC, 400 Hz, 30% modulation depth and 7 kHz bandwidth in pure AM (not AMSD).

From deep in the LW band right through MW the sensitivity was -112 to -115dBm, mostly around -114 so in fact better than 0.5uV!

Could the signal generator results be dublicated in real life? Well almost. I tested the E1 and a 746Pro on the Australian 4KZ-1620 which was a threshold levels at the time. Audio recovery in the 0.6uV 746Pro was marginally better than the E1. But the margin was very narrow indeed.

And that is as far as I have come today. Oh, one last thing. It has a sort of rubberized surface. I don't like that. It is bound to collect (and keep) dust. And I wonder how it will sustain to wear and tear.

First impression: I like it.

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