Advice Needed For Most Sensitive VHF Receiver

Rishayan · Mar 27, 2016

I am looking for a highly sensitive vhf high band analog reciever for general montoring and DXing purposes. I have a couple Uniden and Radio Shack receivers but although the radio shack pro651 has good sensitivity, it suffers with intermod interference from powerfull nearby paging transmitters and the uniden 436 doesn´t have this problem but it is not as sensitive. I was trying to decide between the Kenwood thk20a or the icom V80 sport or the alinco dj-x11t , they all have good specs as to sensitivity, so if anyone out there has experience with these radios and could give me your comments on their sensitivity, I would really apreciate it. I am only interested in receiving transmissions on primarily the 2 meter amateur band, and the 151- 160 vhf analog public safety bands. Thank you.

Kb2Jpd · May 10, 2016

Rishayan said:
I am looking for a highly sensitive vhf high band analog reciever for general montoring and DXing purposes. I have a couple Uniden and Radio Shack receivers but although the radio shack pro651 has good sensitivity, it suffers with intermod interference from powerfull nearby paging transmitters and the uniden 436 doesn´t have this problem but it is not as sensitive. I was trying to decide between the Kenwood thk20a or the icom V80 sport or the alinco dj-x11t , they all have good specs as to sensitivity, so if anyone out there has experience with these radios and could give me your comments on their sensitivity, I would really apreciate it. I am only interested in receiving transmissions on primarily the 2 meter amateur band, and the 151- 160 vhf analog public safety bands. Thank you.

Hi from Adam Kb2Jpd in Brooklyn New York

You need a good receiver first. Most commercial radios will have the circuitry to keep the adjacent high power stuff out. However when you put anything remotely doing receive amplifiers, the large signal is going to combine with any else being transmitted and you are going to hear the mix in your receiver.

Get a good modern receiver or transceiver built for the band. Test it. If no interference you are blessed by the ham radio gods. If you get some, consider bandpass filter ( read: a lot of money) or directional antenna or both.

kb5udf · May 10, 2016

My pick all around FT-857

I will probably get flack for this but here goes. My trusty Yaesu Ft-857R is my favorite VHF
receiver. Unlike commercial radios it is freely tunable with a VFO. I have it hooked up to
a VHF/UHF omni with gain in the city and suffer no intermod. FYI the UHF side never
impressed me. But on high band and air, it's my favorite.

JB

bharvey2 · May 11, 2016

Don't get tunnel vision when looking for a good receiver. Selectivity is just as important as sensitivity. The Radio Shack scanners are pretty sensitive but their selectivity is lacking and that is why you may be having trouble with interference. As was mentioned above, some type of filtration designed for the bands you are trying to receive may be of benefit.

Kb2Jpd · May 11, 2016

kb5udf said:
I will probably get flack for this but here goes. My trusty Yaesu Ft-857R is my favorite VHF

receiver. Unlike commercial radios it is freely tunable with a VFO. I have it hooked up to

a VHF/UHF omni with gain in the city and suffer no intermod. FYI the UHF side never

impressed me. But on high band and air, it's my favorite.

JB

My experience with hams and radio hobbyists are they are a biased group regarding what gear they use. So no flack here.

If it works for you, great, more power to you.

sibbley · May 11, 2016

The DJ-X11T is a damn fine receiver. From my experience, it works exceptionally well in the VHF band. I'm able to hear comms with it I never, never heard with any of my other scanners (Uniden/GRE/RS). I love the gain adjustment on the Alinco. I've used it to find new frequencies, and to tune in others that were hard to get with the scanners.

Project25_MASTR · May 11, 2016

Best I've found so far are the Hamtronics receivers. They spec out similarly to most commercial receivers but where commercial options have 60 dB adjacent channel rejection, these have 100 dB. They are really designed for repeater receivers though.

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iMONITOR · May 11, 2016

IC-R8500 Communications Receiver - Features - Icom America

You can usually find them on Ebay:

ic-r8500 | eBay

Advice Needed For Most Sensitive VHF Receiver

Rishayan

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Kb2Jpd

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kb5udf

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bharvey2

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Kb2Jpd

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sibbley

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Project25_MASTR

Millennial Graying OBT Guy

iMONITOR

Silent Key

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