Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, who recently discovered two note-worthy items on eBay.
The first is a WinRadio Excelsior SDR.
Dan notes:
A seller on eBay is offering the WR-G39DDCi. Just picked one up on a Buy It Now for $200.
He still has some up without Buy It Now but the price is creeping up. Heck of a deal considering the price new….
Click here to view this listing on eBay.
That’s simply amazing you found an Excelsior for $200! WOW! Perhaps this eBay seller will post more WR-G39DDCi units with a BuyItNow price? I’d be willing to bet these may have all come from a commercial or government auction.
The second item Dan shares is a Sony CRF-230 with original box.
Dan notes:
This guy is trying to get too high a price, but these 230s are rarely seen with the original box. There are many 230s on eBay and prices are usually in the several 100s of dollar range. Anyone considering this one should insist on seeing a video of the receiver powered on and working. The seller’s starting price level is at lest 2 to 3 times what a SONY CRF-330K would be in LNIB condition.
A rare bird indeed, but as you point out, Dan, the BuyItNow price is astronomically high.
Note the seller does have a Make An Offer option, too. I suspect that’s what they’ll end up accepting if they ever wish to sell this unit.
Thanks again for sharing your eBay finds, Dan!
FYI … Note that the seller has received 39 negative feedbacks in the past 12 months including six in the last 30 days.
Hey Dan that Excelsior is a great find!
Here on the SWLing Post a few months ago Thomas posted about a WinRadio Excelsior (USB version) for sale on eBay. I grabbed it – it shipped from the USA just fine and now is in daily use at my Freemans Reach Australia site. It’s fantastic for LW, MW, HF, VHF, UHF and up to Microwave.
While the Excelsior covers SW, MW and LW I prefer to use my WinRadio Excalibur for SW & MW. Not because of performance issues, but because the Excelsior has a fan (the Excalibur doesn’t) and in the Australian summer that little fan has been working overtime!
The fan speed is automatically controlled based on operating temperature, in the Australian winter is may not even run and I won’t be distracted by it as I listen to weak far off SW music (I mainly listen to tropical band stations on SW).
VHF and UHF use on the Excelsior is amazing! With my two WinRadio receivers I now capture and archive spectrum in WinRadio format from 500KHz right up to microwave. I’m using up lots of hard disks LOL!
It’s interesting that an Eham.net review of the G39DDCi mentions “Unfortunately the HF receiver suffers from serious front-end overload and without a MW filter (or proper attenuation) dramatically cripples its performance. The manufacture warns about this problem, but has yet to offer a practical solution (e.g., the G31DDC has a built in MW front end filter). With protection, the HF receiver performs well and is quite useable for CW, SSB, AM, etc.”
Apparently this SDR truly excels on VHF and above, according to the rest of the review.