AOR AR-DV1

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BamaScan

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I might have spoke to soon. I am noticing when I power down the unit and move it to another room and power it up again all I get is a orange screen. The screen stays orange for ever. Nothing I can do except unplug it. After multiple times it will work like it should . Has anyone noticed this ??
 

prplehz

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Pretty sure digital wasn't even used 20 years ago.. Pretty sure this unit here doesn't even trunk track... Talk about irony in your fan boy post... Since his post was removed. May as well remove mine too, lol. Have fun with these beasts guys.
 
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Voyager

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No idea whose post you are replying to, but for the record GE had digital systems in the late 80s - like 25 years ago plus. Google AEGIS. Motorola ASTRO came about in the very early 90s. Even the P25 digital standard dates back to around the same time.

Now if you want to expand 'digital' to include data, that goes back into the early 80s if not 70s.
 

Wrangell

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Test AOR AR-DV1

Hello everyone.

When you test the receiver. It includes audio stereo output (for headphones) - VHF FM broadcast?
Of course - sensitivity, internal spurii, images, performance over small supplied antenna...

Thanks.
 

AA6IO

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An interesting radio. P25 and NXDN decode sound decent. Have not heard any DMR yet. This radio is a typical wide-band receiver that overloads like crazy on MW/SW/HF. With an AM band filter in line, not bad tonight from 4 to 15 Mhz. Kind of nice to be able to go from VFO A on 40 meter CW to VFO B and a NXDN railroad station or P25 LAPD. The problem, however, is only one antenna input. At least two antenna inputs would have been real nice. That is a real issue. Why have a 100 khz to 1300 Mhz receiver with two VFOs and only one antenna input. Not real swift in the design department if you ask me.
Have not done any scanning or search function yet. Only been playing with radio for about 4 hours. I can see some potential for a fun experience with this radio. But I have been around radios and SDRs long enough to know that this radio might be fun to play with, but for serious monitoring of any sort, at least for me, it's not going to replace my Perseus or ELAD FDM-S2, its not going to replace my better scanners like the x36HPs or even the WS-1080 and 1095 (I presume coming soon), and frankly, for those of you into hard core digital monitoring, I don't know that it is going to replace some pretty good software like DSD+ with a decent dongle or a good tapped scanner (or a dedicated NXDN or DMR radio).
Seems like a good first attempt, but seems like one of the old wide-band receivers now with some digital modes added. I'll do a more in depth survey of some functions in next few days once I have some time. However, the lack of software is going to keep me from doing a whole lot of scanning. I'm past the days of manual programming, except in a pinch, in this day and age of software and SD cards with databases. Another point I guess, this radio uses an SD card, so why only 2000 memories and no database potential.
Will be interested in what others have to say.
 

FrankNY

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The problem, however, is only one antenna input. At least two antenna inputs would have been real nice. That is a real issue. Why have a 100 khz to 1300 Mhz receiver with two VFOs and only one antenna input. Not real swift in the design department if you ask me.

Yes, I mentioned this once or twice previously in this thread. My assumption is that AOR expects that purchasers of this particular radio use their SA7000 Super wide band base aerial system, or something similar.

SA7000 at AOR USA

The SA7000 is currently $279.95 at Universal Radio.

SA7000 at Universal Radio

Frank.
 

AA6IO

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I also spoke too soon. I started to play with search and scan functions. The basic search functions seem to work sometimes and not at others. I can't even get the radio to do a simple frequency search up and down from an input frequency. I did manage to do a limit search from 154 to 158 Mhz with 5 Khz spacing as a test. The search was unbelievably slow. It must have taken 20 sec to go 4 Mhz. This was with the squelch set very high.
Then when the radio hit on some analog VHF stations in that range, it had problems opening up the squelch on most signals. These are routine signals that I monitor with any scanner, even the BC125AT, with absolutely no problem. Also, when I had the mode in auto, the scanner had problems going to AM or FM in the airband and VHF. In auto, it would not open up on any NXDN railroad stations around 160 Mhz.
Then all of a sudden the scanner went off. Turned it back on, an orange blank screen like BamaScan described. Came back on after about 2 minutes, same situation with basic search.
Sorry folks, I will let some of you others play with this radio. This is not worth $1200, not to me at least. I expected that being a receiver, rather than a scanner, at least the sensitivity would be better than my Unidens, and perhaps on a par with my GRE/RS on VHF. But this radio is giving me weaker airband and VHF than most of my scanners, even less than the 536HP.
No thanks. I hope you have a better experience. Going to be making another trip to AOR later today.
Steve
 

KD4YGG

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I might have spoke to soon. I am noticing when I power down the unit and move it to another room and power it up again all I get is a orange screen. The screen stays orange for ever. Nothing I can do except unplug it. After multiple times it will work like it should . Has anyone noticed this ??

Manual states...

"After the opening screen appears on the LCD, the main screen will then be displayed. It will take approximately eight seconds before the main screen appears. This is a normal process to initialize the AR-DV1."

Appears to be a long time for initialization and boot-loading - eight seconds is a very long time, and any power disruption, drop, etc. during that time might be causing data corruption due to abnormal power up conditions.

Apparently powering back off and back on fixes the problem.

When you state "multiple times", is it 2 times, 3 times, or more?
Does any waiting period of 15, 30, 60 seconds seem to make it better or worse?
 

KD4YGG

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Sorry folks, I will let some of you others play with this radio. This is not worth $1200, not to me at least....

No thanks. I hope you have a better experience. Going to be making another trip to AOR later today.
Steve

Steve, thanks for your posting regarding this feedback, as well as your efforts in talking directly with AOR.


My initial thoughts of this radio made it look promising... I, like many others, are glad we waited.


I'll stick with DSD+ and the IF-Output of my trusty PSR-800.
 

KA2ZEY

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Do these guys at AOR design these radios in a vacuum?? Or without reading one single forum or reaching out to enthusiasts? I don't get what goes on behind the scenes. Are these guys aware of any recent developments in monitoring technology?
 

Andy3

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Do these guys at AOR design these radios in a vacuum?? Or without reading one single forum or reaching out to enthusiasts? I don't get what goes on behind the scenes. Are these guys aware of any recent developments in monitoring technology?

It is a bit strange. If they had just spent a few more weeks or months looking into real-world radio systems and writing firmware and software that would make the radio receive the various modes properly, then they'd be on an instant winner. What's the point in launching early and getting bad reviews? It just puts prospective buyers off, and many of those buyers don't come back for a second look.
 

AA6IO

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Just returned my radio to AOR and discussed issues with Taka for some time, in both English and Japanese. He is aware of all the issues. He said that he also received a lot of issue reports from Jeff at Ham Station. I told Taka that the basic search functions don't work well, and he basically said that we all (meaning us who bought the radio) are really the first ones to test this in the real world. He again wanted to know if I might be willing to wait for some future firmdates, but when I discussed the "Auto" mode not working issue (ie, search spectrum, hit FM, AM, digitial, the radio switches to that mode), I was further surprised (actually shocked). He told me that the "Auto" function is really meant for D-Star only at this point.
I then asked him, "Does this mean when we search the spectrum, we have to have our radio in a particular mode to hear those transmissions, and his answer was "YES." I noticed this last night manually searching from 159 to 161.5 Mhz where there are some NXDN stations (railroad) here in Los Angeles. When I had the radio is "digital mode" for NXDN, it would pick up the audio, and in fairness, it sounded pretty decent. But it would not pick up the FM signals in that range very well, if at all. When I had the mode in "Auto," it would not decode the NXDN, and in most cases, even had trouble with FM.
My comment to this group: Who the heck designed that feature." What use is that if I am monitoring a frequency range and the radio can not pick out the mode while in Auto feature?
Anyway, long story short. Taka was very pleasant. Said he understood my concerns, and he took back the radio, no more questions asked, and Ham Station, from whom I actually purchased the radio, will not be billed. So everything is OK with me.
Taka said to me at the end of our conversation today in person that he is even thinking about no further sales of the radio until some of the firmware issues are fixed. He is concerned about comments from others as well.
I might actually have kept the radio if I thought firmware was going to fix some basic problems. But no trunking, one antenna connector, "Auto mode" not designed for what most of consider "Auto" to mean in a high quality scanner, basic search not working out of the box, and on and on, seems to be more than simple firmware issues. So I had the AR DV-1 for one day, its back home at AOR, and that's my story. Again, YMMV.
 

prc117f

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I doubt firmware updates will provide a fix for a design issue.

AOR is accustomed to selling very expensive for what you get hardware to governments used to paying for 500 dollar left handed hammers. They are In a vacuum. If the dv1 was priced at 5000 dollars as it is today and marketed to government agencies they would probably sell a bunch.

I am not surprised by the outcome. A radio that underperformed a 600 trunk tracking scanner and cannot even trunktrack for 1200.

The people who paid 1200 to be a beta tester will have a nice looking boat anchor.
 
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EricCottrell

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Hello,

I get the impression that having upgradable firmware negates, in some companies, the engineering argument of getting the product working correctly and completely before release.

I have a AR-Alpha that has some Scan/Search bugs. The CTCSS decode does not always work.

Being out of touch is not limited to AOR. ICOM initally disabled P25 in the R2500 above 800 MHz, so P25 did not work in the most popular P25 bands in the US.

73 Eric
 
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