Saturday, July 24, 2010

Updated G31DDC Excalibur Review

I needed to do some cosmetic changes, but also some regarding content. Errors are corrected, and a further discussion regarding the Excalibur's DDC recording capability has been added. The download link is the same.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Bjarne -

You wrote "Recordings can be looped in playback, and you can jump back and forth". Does that mean jump back and forth inside a file, or between files?

Excellent review! Informative and well-written. You get extra points for using the word "cacophony".

Chuck

Bjarne Mjelde said...

Thanks Chuck. "Jump back and forth" is a bit misleading. Actually what you do is "slide" back and forth, by selecting the slider on the playback line. But yes, it's inside a file.

M .Van Driessche said...

Bjarne, the Excaibur here yet arrived.De demo version is the version even if you connect the Excalibur? or do you need the included CD ROM? Nice to see the Pdf review.
73,
Maurits
Belgium

Bjarne Mjelde said...

Maurits,
yes, you can use the software you downloaded. It will be in "demo" version whenever the Excalibur is not connected. I didn't use the CD.

M .Van Driessche said...

Thanks Bjarne ,and about the price I pay 780euro taks including .But in the Netherlands and Germany are this 950euro and more ...A hope to see more here about the Excalibur .
Thanks in advance
73,
Maurits
Belgium

GuidoS said...

Hello Bjarne,,
I've been playing around with the demo version and your recorded spectrum files.

Well, I must day that (as a Perseus owner) I am not really overwhelmed with the Excalibur performance. Of course this is a first "feeling" and I have to discover a lot of function in this new receiver. What I noticed almost instantly was that the static crashes are much more noticeable in the Excalibur than in the Perseus. I'm missing snap-frequency tuning also desperately.

But what's really impressive is the price. They have dropped their profit margin substantially. A few years ago, I paid 1250 Euros for a G313e...

73,

Guido
Antwerp-Belgium

geoff said...

I just bought a Winradio Excalibur. I got it going last night. Allouis (southern France) on 182khz comes in almost every night. It came in clearly on my Drake R8 and all I heard was noise on the Excalibur. CIAO 530khz was very weak on the Drake but I could hear the carrier beat on SSB mode with the Drake. I couldn’t hear a thing with the Excalibur. CBC (St. John’s ) 640khz was received on both receivers but sounded better on the Drake. Above 1 mhz, the two were comparable. What’s going on???? I thought the Excalibur was supposed to be the next coming. Look at the Excalibur’s specs...Is the Drake that good?

Bjarne Mjelde said...

The only thing I can think of is: Is the MW Filter enabled? If so, the MW will be attenuated since the MW Filter button activates a high pass filter at around 1.8 MHz. As you may know the HP filter will increase the attenuation with decreasing frequency.

Otherwise, the Excalibur is a very sensitive receiver, and should hear just as well as the R8.