So, after a very long time of not posting here I thought I would take the opportunity to 'resurrect' this blog and post on my findings with my recently purchased Radtel 950 Pro radio. Just like Chinese manufactured cars, the UK is being 'flooded' with Chinese radio equipment so just how good is the 950 pro particularly for airband listeners?
I have to say, I am comparing the Radtel 950 Pro against my Icom IC R15 which is a completely unfair comparison as the Radtel cost just £89 and the Icom over £400! The R15 in my humble opinion, is one of the best radios around for Civil and military airband listening right now and I think, ranks alongside 'benchmark' receivers such as the Signal R535 & Yupiteru MVT7100 (I've owned both in the past) but I'm not going to go into all the reasons why just now.
I bought the Radtel for two reasons, number one, I wanted a tougher more rugged (and cheaper) radio that I could use when 'in the field' away from home or at an airfield/airshow which is not very often for me. Reason number two was because I just occasionally listen to HF aero frequencies which the Radtel is also capable of doing but I am not able to compare it alongside a 'better' HF radio.
So having compared the Radtel alongside the R15 on the very same dipole antenna, I can honestly say on VHF airband the Radtel is really very good on both audio quality and sensitivity, I was truly surprised by it's performance! although some of the weakest signals come through as carrier wave only with no discernible audio whereas those signals are still good audio on the R15 as you would expect.
It is a slightly different story on UHF military band however. It is quite difficult to compare signals on UHF mil as transmissions are often very short, but I have managed to do so, by comparing known frequencies primarily for Swanwick military. So having monitored 233.725MHz on both radios, reception seems very good on the Radtel but by the time you reach Swanwick mil central on 252.875 the Radtel is almost completely deaf to very strong transmissions here. I was able to compare signals on 256.200 (a known Lakenheath air to air) and then further up the band, Swanwick mil on 275.500 and I have to say the Radtel remains pretty deaf on those frequencies!
Just quite how low and how high this 'null zone' extends I'm still working on, but what I have noticed is that known frequencies that are 350MHz and above, are coming through load and clear again and comparable to the R15.
I think all in all, given it's price point, you are getting a lot of radio for your money and it will serve the purpose for which I brought it. It's never going to replace my R15, but it has some great features such as displaying three frequencies at once etc.
Just a point on it's memory features, what I consider memory 'banks' are labelled 'zones' on the Radtel. The free software available for programming memories is not great, but it works. In my very unscientific testing, it seems to scan memory channels at a very slow 5-6 channels a second (100+ on the R15!) so for airband monitoring you really don't want to be scanning more than a handful of frequencies at a time.
In conclusion, if your main interest is VHF air you could do a lot worse than the 950 pro, it's audio quality and sensitivity really surprised me, however if you monitor a lot of mil air frequencies like myself, the 'null reception zone' around 250-275MHz coupled with the very slow scan rate of memory channels means it's not so great a choice. As I've already said, it's never going to replace my R15 as my main listening device but I do still believe, you are getting a lot of radio for less than £100!
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