At this point, I think the FT-450D is the best value for a starter rig. A friend and Elmeree purchased one recently and brought it over and we put it through its paces. It performed very well. It features 100W output on 160 – 6m, general coverage receive from 30 kHz to 54 MHz, a built-in antenna tuner and 500 Hz and 3 kHz filters, in addition to IF DSP.
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Bill Kisse says
I purchased a used Kenwood TS-480 last year and in my opinion it’s the best HF transceiver available for the price.
Tapping the buffered first-IF I now have a panadapter using an inexpensive SDR dongle, and full remote control.
My “Poor man’s Flex Radio”!
73,
Bill
W3MSH
Gordon says
I agree. The TS-480 is a great radio. I started with the SDR dongle and the tapped IF and later moved to a RSPDx, SDRuno, HRD and dual MFJ-1708s. I also use CATSync to listen to SDR radios around the world.
Kirk Lawrence says
a good radio right now (used) is an FTdx1200 (~ $700). The 1200 has a nice 32bit IF DSP and many features. Just as Bill did with an SDR dongle, I’ve done 2 like this, using the free [HDSDR software] and proved to be excellent! 73 Kirk AB8BC