WiNRADiO Excalibur and Excelsior external version receivers?

[se]

Hello All.

Im in London. Ontario Canada and I want to hear back from any hobbyist users of the WiNRADiO Excalibur and/or Excelsior external receivers because I really want to know about the pros and cons of these 2 receivers? Does the latest version of the Advanced Digital Suite work well with these 2 receivers? Specifically I want to know if I would be able to do any WEFAX decoding from my location?

Thanls Sheldon.

 

[Token]

Yes, the ADS (Advanced Digital Suite) with latest updates works with these receivers. In fact I was able to take my old original version of ADS (purchased with a WR-1550e probably 10 years ago) and apply the updates and have it work with both the Excalibur (and Excal Pro) and the Excelsior.

As far as doing WEFAX decoding from your location I can not answer that, but I can tell you I can do WEFAX using ADS from my location. By the way, there are several other options to do WEFAX with if you do not want to spend the money on the ADS. While I have the ADS I do not consider it to be a very valuable software package, it is slightly over priced, in my opinion, for what it does. Most of the features can be achieved using free or lower cost software, but at the expense of using multiple pieces of software instead of one nicely integrated package.

To compare the Excalibur (or the Excalibur Pro) and the Excelsior is kind of an apples and oranges thing. One covers 0 to 50 MHz with unequaled capability and the other 0 to 3500 MHz in a way that has never been available to hobbyist before.

If you look only at HF then the Excalibur covers that range "better" (in my opinion) than the Excelsior does. The Excalibur only shows 2 MHz of DDC spectrum, but the Excalibur Pro shows 4 MHz just like the Excelsior (Excelsior actually does 4 and 2 MHz, in different windows). But both the Excalibur and the Excalibur Pro show either 30 or 50 MHz of real time spectrum on the wideband display, while the Excelsior only shows 16 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth (real time spectrum). The Excelsior will "stitch" the wideband display for a displayed width up to 1 GHz, but to do this it "scans", capturing 16 MHz chunks at a time, to give you the range you desire. This means it can and does miss signals when trying to grab 30 or 50 MHz worth of bandwidth, signals that the Excalibur or Excalibur Pro does not miss in the "same" wideband width. However, nether the Excalibur or the Pro goes above 50 MHz.

In my opinion, if you are going to do HF, get either the Excalibur or the Excalibur Pro, if you also will be doing other freq ranges and don't mind NOT being able to do all of HF while doing those other bands then get the Excelsior. In my case I like to monitor HF while also looking at higher frequencies, so I use separate radios for the two purposes. If you are looking for one "all-in-one" radio to do everything, then the Excelsior might be the best bet on the market.

T!

 

[se]

Hi.

I first became familiar with Winradio back between 1996 up until I bought a WR1550i in 2000. It was advertised to work great as a wide range receiver, but that only holds true if you connect it to a homebrew active antenna array, which I had someone build for me. Overall performance was improved dramatically with the antenna array in the 1550i. I later bought an internal G303 and had the array connected to it to try to do all the things I wanted to do with it with some degree of success. I bought quite alot of the different software that Winradio had to offer such as the original Digital Suite, The Advanced Digital Suite, The Trunking Option, The Worldstation Database Manager, etc, plus I had alot of the Plug-Ins. Overall I think/hope that most of the Winradio receivers have improved significantly over the years as the reviews seem to indicate that. I may buy an Excalibur Pro in the not to distant future or if the price is right, an Excelsior I really like the specs on it.

Cheers Sheldon.

 

[majoco]

Are you sure you mean the G303 and not the G305? 303 = HF only, 305 = DC to daylight. MY G303 still woks well and does what I want it to do with the addition of the VSC and freeware programmes. Worldstation Database? Forget it.

 

[Token]

Hi.

I first became familiar with Winradio back between 1996 up until I bought a WR1550i in 2000. It was advertised to work great as a wide range receiver, but that only holds true if you connect it to a homebrew active antenna array, which I had someone build for me. Overall performance was improved dramatically with the antenna array in the 1550i. I later bought an internal G303 and had the array connected to it to try to do all the things I wanted to do with it with some degree of success.

My first WinRadio product was the WR-1000i. In fact the WinRadio product line is what made me change from Mac to PC, or at least get a PC in addition to the Mac. That was in either 1996 or 1997, not sure which, but it was before Windows 98 was out.

I still run two of the WR-1550’s here at the house, they are good little radios, I also have my original WR-1000i and a WR-3550, and both of those are still used. In their day they (the 1550’s) were quite good, with a capability that was matched by few others on the market, and pretty much nothing else at the price point. But until you get to spending real money broadband all mode radios like that are always a compromise.

Typically at the lower cost points a broadband DC to daylight radio is a good VHF/UHF radio with added HF capability. That is the description of the WR-1000i. By the time the WR-1550 came out they had improved the HF performance, driven by competition from the Icom PC-1000 and later PC-1500. The performance of the WinRadio WR-1550 and the Icom PC-1500 was significantly less good than the Icom R-8500, but they also cost less than one third the price.

TANSTAAFL

The Excelsior is a very good radio, with very good performance across its entire range. But, it is not inexpensive. And if your target is HF, as in Shortwave and such, the Excalibur, either Pro or none-Pro, will do everything the Excelsior will and then some (except the second DDC window).

I am not really sure what you mean by “It was advertised to work great as a wide range receiver, but that only holds true if you connect it to a homebrew active antenna array” when talking about the WR-1550. Of course any radio must be connected to an antenna that works across the frequency range being tuned. I can say for sure I have never had any of my wideband receivers attached to an active antenna, I pretty much detest active antennas.

There is no such thing as a single antenna, active or otherwise, that will work well across the entire frequency range of the WR-1550. Keep what I said in mind, work “well”, you can, naturally, make something that will do something across that range, but not as well as covering that range with multiple antennas. Plugging a paperclip into the BNC connector may well work to receive signals across the entire bandwidth, but only if the signals were very strong.

One efficient antenna that goes from 150 kHz to 1500 MHz, 5 orders of magnitude, is a pipe dream…or the ensuing array of antennas going to a single feedpoint will probably cost many, many, times the price of the radio itself. A very well designed Discone antenna might have a bandwidth of 1:25, say covering 50 to 1250 MHz in a single antenna, but an antenna covering the complete range of something like the WR-1550 would require a bandwidth of 1:10000. The reality is that you have to use different antennas for different portions of spectrum, and that is not driven by the radio, but rather by the frequency range being covered. A half wave resonant antenna at 150 kHz has a length of about 1000 meters, while the same type of antenna at 1500 MHz has a length of about 10 cm.

Now I know that a few readers might look at what I said about Discones above and jump in with a comment like “my Diamond D-130J Discone covers 25 to 1300 MHz, so that is like 1:52 bandwidth, not the 1:25 you quote”. This is true, but this antenna, and several similar antennas, do this as an array. They combine a Discone that is good from maybe 70 to 1250 MHz with a loaded vertical to extend the low frequency range, and they also quote such a bandwidth with a known roll-off in performance at either end of the range.

So, realistically, you need at least 2 antennas to cover the bandwidth of something like the WR-1550. Say a Discone to cover 30 to 1500 MHz, and some kind of MF/HF antenna to cover from 30 MHz down. And even then you will still have less than optimal performance in pretty big chunks of spectrum. Personally I use about a dozen antennas to cover that range of frequencies.

And the G39DDC Excelsior covers 9 kHz to 3500 MHz, a ratio of more than 1:38000. An even more daunting antenna task, if you want efficient coverage across the entire bandwidth. Of course, the smart answer here is to pick your battles. Why try to cover all of that range equally when some portions of it are almost unused? You tailor your antennas to your desired targets and frequency ranges, this gives optimal performance and return.

Regardless, whatever radio a person uses you must use an antenna that covers the desired range. A radio without an antenna is like the biggest, baddest, most kick butt stereo in the world…with no speakers attached. And by the same token you would not use a pair of 3” full range portable radio speakers with a 1200 Watt 7+ channel home theater system, or if you did you would not have any right to complain with the resultant sound quality.


T!