Ok, I've spent about 2 hours listening to the GP5/SSB in a good RFI free area, and here is what I've found.
I went to my usual train watching location in Holland, Oh, and Norfolk Southern has provided a nice chain link fence for me to clip the wire antenna to. I heard a LOT of stuff there, 20 Meters was busy, and I heard a lot of contest "junk" going on. Incredibly boring, but a lot of signals to listen to. I heard Radio Havana on a couple of frequencies, and they were very loud. A lot of the usual preachers asking for money, a numbers station in Spanish, and a couple of VOLMET stations in SSB too. SSB is clear, but there is some pumping due to the AGC. Again, since the AGC is not adjustable, this is as expected. I've never seen a radio without adjustable AGC that doesn't do it. The muting when tuning is odd, to put it mildly, there is a chuff/crunch noise with each step. If there is a way ( a mod) to defeat it, I would love to give it a shot. So far, this is my biggest annoyance with the GP5/SSB. At home before bed, I tried using just the built in whip on SW without much success. I heard Radio Havana again, a VOLMET station, and some others. I had the wire antenna clipped to the top of the drapes, with about 1/3 of the wire lying on top of the drapery rod, and then over to a lampshade. I used a plastic clothespin to hold the wire to the lampshade to keep it from falling off the lampshade when I took the wire antenna off, as the height of the wire helps reception, a lot. When I connected the wire antenna, it helped tremendously, and I got similar results to what I got at the tracks earlier.
1. Without the wire antenna, you won't hear much SW at all unless the conditions are fantastic, or the signals are very strong. No shock here. I didn't expect anything else.
2. You have to tune very slowly, or, due to the muting between tuning steps, you will miss or overshoot signals. In AM 1KHZ slow 5KHZ fast tuning steps, I frequently would overshoot signals twice, once in both directions as the variable step kicked in and instead of going up 1KHZ, it would go up 5KHZ instead, and do the same thing going down. Maybe it's just some getting used to it, but I kept doing it.
3. The form factor is pretty much perfect for one handed operation, in the right hand. The thumb is perfectly placed to use the tuning knob. The unit is so light, fatigue is not a factor.
My questions are how long the tuning knob will hold up as it's used a LOT. The volume control appears to be the standard one used forever, and they hold up well over time, but I don't know if the tuning knob will. Time will tell. As cheap as it is, I wonder what kind of lifespan it will have. My Sony ICF-2002 lasted a long time, but I paid about $120 bucks for it, I think, so it should have lasted longer. All in all though, this thing is a lot of fun in a tiny package, with surprisingly big audio.
I went to my usual train watching location in Holland, Oh, and Norfolk Southern has provided a nice chain link fence for me to clip the wire antenna to. I heard a LOT of stuff there, 20 Meters was busy, and I heard a lot of contest "junk" going on. Incredibly boring, but a lot of signals to listen to. I heard Radio Havana on a couple of frequencies, and they were very loud. A lot of the usual preachers asking for money, a numbers station in Spanish, and a couple of VOLMET stations in SSB too. SSB is clear, but there is some pumping due to the AGC. Again, since the AGC is not adjustable, this is as expected. I've never seen a radio without adjustable AGC that doesn't do it. The muting when tuning is odd, to put it mildly, there is a chuff/crunch noise with each step. If there is a way ( a mod) to defeat it, I would love to give it a shot. So far, this is my biggest annoyance with the GP5/SSB. At home before bed, I tried using just the built in whip on SW without much success. I heard Radio Havana again, a VOLMET station, and some others. I had the wire antenna clipped to the top of the drapes, with about 1/3 of the wire lying on top of the drapery rod, and then over to a lampshade. I used a plastic clothespin to hold the wire to the lampshade to keep it from falling off the lampshade when I took the wire antenna off, as the height of the wire helps reception, a lot. When I connected the wire antenna, it helped tremendously, and I got similar results to what I got at the tracks earlier.
1. Without the wire antenna, you won't hear much SW at all unless the conditions are fantastic, or the signals are very strong. No shock here. I didn't expect anything else.
2. You have to tune very slowly, or, due to the muting between tuning steps, you will miss or overshoot signals. In AM 1KHZ slow 5KHZ fast tuning steps, I frequently would overshoot signals twice, once in both directions as the variable step kicked in and instead of going up 1KHZ, it would go up 5KHZ instead, and do the same thing going down. Maybe it's just some getting used to it, but I kept doing it.
3. The form factor is pretty much perfect for one handed operation, in the right hand. The thumb is perfectly placed to use the tuning knob. The unit is so light, fatigue is not a factor.
My questions are how long the tuning knob will hold up as it's used a LOT. The volume control appears to be the standard one used forever, and they hold up well over time, but I don't know if the tuning knob will. Time will tell. As cheap as it is, I wonder what kind of lifespan it will have. My Sony ICF-2002 lasted a long time, but I paid about $120 bucks for it, I think, so it should have lasted longer. All in all though, this thing is a lot of fun in a tiny package, with surprisingly big audio.
Last edited:
