Eton E5 or any other recommendations?

[island_state]

Hi,

A few months ago I bought my first HF receiver which was a DX-394. I got really into HF DX and after trying some home made antenna, finally decided to get a Wellbrook 1530 loop, which is awesome. Now, after spending so much on an antenna I'm thinking that it may be wasted on the DX-394.

Trouble is, I don't want to spend too much on a receiver. Looking at ebay, the prices of HF receivers are really silly money for old pieces of kit.

I've been looking recently at the Eton E5 (the E1 would be good but out of budget!).

I wonder if the Eton E5 would be better than my DX-394 when coupled with my Wellbrook loop?

My main interests are Navtex on 490 and 518Khz, Kinloss on 5.680, or basically everything up to 8Mhz.

Even with the 1530 loop, Navtex is not coming in that well with the DX-394. I can get the odd signal on 490khz but seems to be deaf on 518khz. I'd love to get Malin Head on about 1.677 as used to live near there, but haven't heard anything from there.

I'm not sure if I'm expecting too much, and as I said, I'm fairly new to the HF bands.

Looking forward to any advice!

Andy

[seahorse]

Eton E5 is my receiver and I would recommend it, Island State. It is a very good buy for the money. It is easy to use, sensitive (FM is particularly good) and easy to carry around. Downsides, I get chugging noises on some sub-2MHz frequencies and I think some SSB signals sometimes spill over into adjacent channels. I use mine with a random wire indoors connected to the whip, which seems better than using the fitted antenna input socket. I would be interested to know how it would work with a loop, whether it could cope with much stronger signals.

[a2c39a]

Hi island_state,

There is also the Degen DE1103.
This is very similar to the E5 but bought brand new direct from China on e-bay is quite a bit cheaper (well mine was).
The DE1103 supposedly has the same circuitry as the E5 but it has a different case and firmware interface. I have both and the performance is very similar on HF but my DE1103's (I've actually got 2!) are better than my E5 on FM (more sensitive/narrower bandwidth).
The DE1103 is usually about ?25 + postage from China but I don't know how the present weak pound has affected that.

Best wishes, John.