Path: utzoo!utgpu!ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca!CUVMA!SWL-L Date: Thu, 18 Jan 90 09:42:03 EST Reply-To: Eric Roskos Sender: Short Wave Listener's List Comments: Warning -- original Sender: tag was From: Eric Roskos Subject: Re: Sangean ATS-803a: clarifications requested X-To: swl-l@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: UofToronto LAN redistribution Message-ID: <90Jan18.123126est.57436@ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca> Newsgroups: bitnet.swl-l Distribution: ut Approved: devnull@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) writes: >(1) I have heard from some reports that the Sangean has dual-conversion. > Other sources (including what my parents were told...) indicated that it > was single-conversion. Which is it? Yes. It has dual conversion. I just read it in the specifications last night. >(2) Does it have digital tuning? This one is less clear, as the descriptions > I've received include features that I would expect to be easier to get > with digital tuning (frequency memories, in particular)... but I'm told > that it's analog tuning. [I'm not talking about keyboard entry of > frequencies, I'm talking about the display.] Yes, it has digital tuning. There is a dial on the side that you can turn, but it just generates digital pulses to the microprocessor to cause the frequency set by the PLL synthesizer to change. The digital tuning includes direct entry via the keypad, moving up and down via "up" and "down" keys (the longer you hold the keys down, the more it skips in each step), and a "search" function that searches for the next station. The dial on the side is sensitive to how fast you turn it -- the faster you turn it, the more it skips on each step (within a limited range). The dial on the side, incidentally, is one of the few things I don't like about the radio... it has a "lightweight plastic" feel. The other things I don't like about it are that the BFO dial is *very* small, and I can't figure out how to set the seconds on the time of day clock to synchronize it with WWV. The manual lists the steps to display the seconds in the section on setting the clock, but then adds a sentence that says that the seconds function won't work while it is in time-setting mode. The radio is microprocessor-controlled, like most digital-tuning radios nowadays. -- Eric Roskos (roskos@CS.IDA.ORG or Roskos@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL)