Great video, thanks! As a ham who also happens to be a longtime SWLer, I rarely listen to broadcast stations in AM mode. I tend to use LSB/USB and filter accordingly. Especially for the noisiest stations, it makes them a lot more pleasant to listen to. I do really like the fact that this Yaesu is a hybrid transceiver, which makes its filtering capabilities and audio quality so high. This radio is still in the top 3 of the Sherwood Engineering list, and its audio quality is superb, especially coupled with the Yaesu SP-30 external speaker. (I've also installed foam baffling in this speaker, which has made for an overall tighter sound.) Cheers!
I've recently purchased the same transceiver. It has an excellent RX. But it has to be kept in mind that this radio has been designed and built for the budget minded radio amateur market. You get a lot of bang for the buck. If I was a shortwave listener with designs on getting licenced this would be my next purchase..the Rx in this radio is no slouch..a really nice performer.. for those on a smaller budget the FT891..the human interface is less than brilliant but the RX performance is really good for what you pay, has many of the DX10s features minus the LED display and larger form factor.
There is a helpful table on page 46 of the manual: AM defaults to 9000Hz. bandwidth, but AM-N (narrow) gives you 6000Hz. which can be a nicer sound. In both cases the 12Khz. roofing filter is active. You can get even narrower bandwidths (
I've learned to appreciate 'Synchronous Detection', especially with selectable sidebands. Manually using LSB or USB can be similar, but the phase lock of Sync seems to be slightly better. Even little tiny cheap handheld radios (e.g. PL-368) can offer it, but it's missing from far too many HF receivers (inexplicable laziness if an SDR). That said, my old Kenwood R-600 (plain old AM detector) has great audio on strong clear signals.
I would love to have such radio back in 1980's. but now, not much shortwave broadcast anymore in 2022 in America. however I used it to listen to CB 27MHz AM AG6JU
In the past week I listened to Radio Romania, Voice of Turkey, Voice of America, Radio Prague, Radio Slovakia, Great music from Radio Nacional Amazona brazil , some music and DX shows on WRMI and WTWW Radio New Zealand, Radio Thailand , China radio, Radio Havana Cuba. plus many utility signals... might not be 1980 ...but tons of stuff still on the air
Thank you for such in depth analysis specifically for SW, which is not usually seen for this pure ham rig. Did you consider the IC7300 when buying this radio? I wonder how the Icom would perform for SW. Thank you!
This radio ranks 3rd on the Sherwood receive data list, while the IC-7300 ranks 23rd. The FT-710 ranks 4th and is $899… a good $600 cheaper than the FTDX10 seen here.
