Who robbed the bank?

A small analogy. Suppose you are the only witness of a bank robbery. In court, the judge asks ‘how many robbers did you see?’. “Three”, you say.

At that point in time, no one in the court room would dare to question your integrity because you have no formal education, or because you have money in the bank, or because you can’t speak English and you need the service of a translator to testify. Three is three in any language. You are simply expected to tell everyone what you saw. Truthfully. Yes, there could have been two more robbers waiting in the getaway car, but you never saw them, so three is a correct number.

A couple months ago I conducted a relatively straight forward ‘WSPR receiving test’ between Flex 6700 and SunSDR2DX. Trying to assure ‘everything being equal’ the humble dx was consistently spitting out more decodes. The result was published here- and created fair bit of uproar. “Not possible! JTDX is a superior decoding software than WSJT! You need to run the test much longer, on all bands. The antenna splitter was not symmetrical! Only proper laboratory tests conducted by qualified technicians matter” and many more.

My goal was not to open a can of worms, I simply told you what I saw on that January day on 15m band.

What was probably more controversial was the final statement “I’ll put my money on SunSDR2DX.”

English is not my first (nor second!) language. What I meant: the humble SunSDR is punching well above its weight, and I am quite surprised by how much return I am getting on my investment. In other words, I am getting plenty of fun per dollar. That’s all.

In January I decided not to conduct any more live on-air tests between the two radios. Not because I need better glasses, or because I cannot count to three, but because ‘on-air’ time on the island is precious. When on Norfolk, transmitting is priority, not receiving.

In the past few weeks I have been enjoying SunSDR2DX. It is the only radio in my small urban shack, and I am even more convinced that I am getting a superb return on my investment. Here is why: it is a small, lightweight unit, ideal for both portable work as well as a desktop ‘anchor’ piece. I can whack it in car boot, take it on expedition, and if I scratch it – who cares.  I can run different software on the laptop and on the desktop computer, and switching between them is as simple as plugging in a LAN cable. The ExpersSDR3, still in Beta, loads in four seconds! I have not seen anything as fast booting as that. As said before, SDR is a platform which provides constant learning. When I play with SDR I feel smart and accomplished. In any way, a superb first radio for an experienced amateur willing to venture into the SDR world.

And here is something for you; an important fact that can not be overstated. In the case of any hardware failure, I will immediately send you a replacement unit. You will be on air the same night if you are in Sydney or 24 – 48 hours anywhere in Australia. The replacement unit will be shipped at our cost, both ways, and you can use it while your radio is being repaired – as long as it takes.

Australia is a far away place. When my Flex 6700 needed a new display (yes, it was still an “under guarantee’ job) it had to be shipped to Perth, then to the US. The customer service was 10/10, but I was without the radio for a considerable amount of time.

With SunSDR your down time will be practically zero.

Biased? Guilty as charged!