Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mark, who recently shared the following comments in response to Dan Robinson’s excellent Malahit DSP-2 review series. Mark writes:
I’ve been playing with my new Malachit for a week now and I am very impressed. It’s got a superb receiver and last night I was pulling in several South American stations using the absolutely amazing Bonito MA305 with the longer whip, not the stock one, it’s around 30 feet up in a tree using H155 coax grounded at the base of the tree, this antenna really blows me away. Some of these stations are only 1Kw and the little Bonito was pulling them in very well indeed. I am in the country so have a very low noise floor and QTH is Ireland.
Yes I do have to turn the RF gain to 0 and use around 20db attenuation on Longwave but I know what I should be receiving here in Ireland on LW and by using attenuation it has no negative effect on LW. I do have a strong enough LW transmitter around 45-50 miles away which is probably having an effect here but if I compare it to my Tecsun PL-990x the Malahit completely obliterated the 990x on LW even with the attenuation on the 990x. Its performance on LW with external antenna is very poor even using one of the hidden features by Press and hold the [ 3 ] key for about 2 seconds, this does make a notable improvement to the 990x on LW and MW but the Malahit completely obliterates it on LW and External antenna. Of course the Malahit has no internal ferrite so without external antenna you won’t receive anything on LW or MW.