On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 05:39:23PM -0500, Steve Richman wrote: | John, the Areo Spectra is really BIG Bucks...close to $900. How's | about the Icom IC-R5 Scanner. Seems quite capable for about $190 and | PC programmable. Any idea of the differences in capabilities?
The two are very different devices. I've got a Yaesu VR-500 -- it's fairly similar to the Icom IC-R5. Basically both are general coverage receivers/scanners that can pick up pretty much everything that's not explicitly blocked (i.e. cell phones) between 1 mHz and 1 gHz (though the VR-500 can also do SSB and CW, which doesn't matter much here.) The Aero Spectra is basically a little spectrum analyzer that only looks at the R/C bands. It tells you a lot more about the signal than the general purpose receivers will. Look at the specifications yourself -- http://www.icomamerica.com/products/receivers/r5/ http://www.aerospectra.com/brochure.pdf The IC-R5 is certainly going to be useful for a broader range of applications, but it can't hold a candle to the R/C Channel Analyzer for analyzing the emissions of R/C transmitters and seeing if they're within specifications and such. It's just not made for that. It's made for listening to the signal, not analyzing it. If what you're worried about is finding out if somebody's on your channel, just get the Hobbico Freq Checker. I got mine yesterday, and it seems to work as advertised, though the sensitivity/range leaves something to be desired. (But that's probably just a matter of getting the right antenna going ...) The IC-R5 or similar receiver will do basically the same thing for you, but the Hobbico unit is certainly easier to use. (Though I'm pretty unimpressed with it's scan rate. But hey, it's $55, so I can't expect too much.) -- Doug McLaren, [EMAIL PROTECTED] After their numbers dwindled from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect Hungry. RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
