Hi Mike,

It is not a matter of stupidity to use an internal loopstick antenna. It is
quite possible to design a portable radio with a loopstick antenna that has
MW performance that at least equals a good communications receiver that has
an external amplified loop antenna connected to it. I have just finished up
a prototype this evening that does just that. It is an easy matter to have
facilities to switch the antenna out of the circuit the way that Grundig has
done with their Satellit receivers for several years. It is also very easy
to bypass the switching altogether and merely wind a small coupling loop
around the ferrite for an external antenna connection. 5 to 10 turns of Litz
wire would do the trick.
The E1 is a very good radio, and I will probably pick one up in the next
year or so. Is it worth the money they are asking for it? Probably. Will the
price come down after the initial wave of sales. Hopefully.
The radio does have XM circuitry, and I know that XM radio was a big
purchaser of the Analog Devices AD607 demodulator chip that I based my Sync
detector on, so if this is the case, this could be a very good radio indeed.
A friend of mine did play his E1 over the phone and it did sound
good.......quite a bit of gain. He told me that he didn't have any IMD
problems, so it sounds like a winner.

Pete

"mike maghakian" wrote in message
...
it sounds like the E1 is better than I thought it would be, this one
could go down in history as a classic. I wonder if the Degen 1108
will be even better since it will have the E1 to jump off of.

many of the complaints I have read seem to be of the "misunderstood"
nature and if the designer was present to answer them would actually
make sense.

I believe that even though the set has XM circuitry, it is a bonus
for american users and that the set was really designed for a global
market and that is the reason for the antenna connector that is a
pain for the US user. notice the choice for the FM range in the setup
options.

I have a feeling that they left out the ferrite antenna because the
set is too big to rotate and they wanted it to be more
omnidirectional for the average user and that anyone that cared to MW
DX would not be stupid enough to use a built in rod and would use at
least a hardwire connected select-a-tenna for max signal gathering.

with a set of this awesome performance, ECSS is a waste of time. ecss
is overrated because of the work involved in accurately tuning the
signal for proper audio fidelity reconstruction and PHASING ! with
the sync performance that is available ECSS sould be forgotten and
use that selectable sync.

even though I have no immediate plans to buy an E1, I will still
study the manual. when I can get one for around $300 used, I will
pick one up.