Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Excalibur's Readout Accuracy


Many DX-ers (MW DX-ers in particular) are concerned about the Excalibur's ability to show the exact frequency down to the hertz. While most SWLs will be indifferent about this, quite a few are monitoring a station's offset from it nominal frequency, and it is also helpful for tentatively ID-ing stations (assuming their offset is reasonably constant).

By zooming in the demodulator panel and by using 1 Hz RBW, monitoring offsets is indeed possible, as illustrated above. Two stations are visible (and audible) on this screen dump from 999 kHz, a Russian-speaking station on 999.008, and a presumed Arabian station on 998.992 kHz. Prior to monitoring, I calibrated the Excalibur using a tone from the signal generator on 1000 kHz. Of course, in order to monitor offsets in the range of 1-5 Hz, the readout must be exact.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is this from the DDC file you uploaded or from live listening?

Bjarne Mjelde said...

Live listening.

Anonymous said...

So the measurements can not be done from the recorded ddc files like Perseus or SpecraVue files?

Anonymous said...

I'm keen Bjarne to read your opinions and comments about the operation and user friendliness of the software compared to the Perseus.

I already have my own opinions since playing back some files, but of course I can't do any live dxing.

Ken

Scotland

Bjarne Mjelde said...

Ken, my blog entries, together with some postings to the Winradio G3 yahoo group will eventually end up in a more comprehensive review of the receiver.

Anonymous said...

Bjarne, the Exclibur makes a very good impression! . As well try with a preamp. For measuring harmonic

73
Maurits
Belgium

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