Albrecht AE-485S review

ReviewReview

Review

ReviewReview

The Albrecht AE485S 10m

Reviewed by Chris Lorek, G4HCL*

ITH THE SUNSPOT cycle at its

present high state the 10m band

W

QSOs possible even if you’re just using
low power and simple antennas. Several
years ago, converted multimode CB rigs
were very popular for this purpose, al-
though you needed to have the required
formal documentation from the
Radiocommunications Agency to own and
use one legally. Recent changes in the UK
law now mean that we can freely purchase
single-band 10m rigs again. Because of
this, transceivers such as the Albrecht
AE485S have become available.

The AE485S is a lightweight and easily
transportable single-band 10m rig, weigh-
ing just 1.2kg and measuring 52 x 165 x
194mm. It has transceive modes of USB,
LSB, FM and AM, with a maximum power
output of 25W on SSB and FM, and 6W on
AM. A variable power control lets you reduce
this to a couple of watts for QRP work.

Being originally derived from a multimode
CB transceiver design, it does not have CW
transmit capabilities, and just tunes using
the front panel click-step control in 10kHz
increments. All isn’t lost though, as a press
of the front panel ‘step’ button also lets you
select the 1kHz digit for frequency selection,
so you can interpolate between the 10kHz
steps. A variable clarifier also lets you tune
in between the 1kHz steps, albeit only on
receive.

For 10m FM operation it usefully has
selectable plus and minus repeater shifts.
There’s even a 1750Hz toneburst button on
the supplied fist microphone for use with
repeaters which need this for access. Five
programmable memory channels are avail-
able in which to store your operating fre-
quencies, and a scan facility can search
through the entire tuning range in 10kHz
steps, pausing whenever the receive squelch
opens.

is often ‘open’, with world-wide

CONTROLS

THE FIST microphone also comes with
up / down buttons for frequency / channel
change, which operate in parallel with the
front panel click-step control. A combined
power on / off and rotary volume knob is
mounted just above the 6-pin microphone
socket, and to the right of this are concentric
controls for mic gain and receive RF gain, a
further concentric control being fitted for
variable transmit power and receive squelch

* PO Box 400, Eastleigh, Hants SO53 4ZF.

adjustments. Each of the rotary controls
has an orange backlit outer ring to help you
locate them in the dark.

The orange backlit front panel LCD shows
the operating frequency to within 1kHz in
large easily-read digits, with a further smaller
digit to the right indicating the selected
memory channel if you’ve recalled one of
these. Along the bottom is a five-section
bargraph giving you an S-meter reading on
receive and relative output power level on
transmit. Smaller icons show the operation
mode, shift status, scan, audio ‘low’ filter
selection and noise blanker status.

Six large push buttons below the display
act together with a push-button facility on
the clarifier control to give multi-function
capability. These let you control the 100kHz,
10kHz or 1kHz frequency digit selection,
noise blanker on / off, operation mode (USB
/ LSB / FM / AM), a low pass audio filter to cut
out high-frequency noise, transmit repeater
shift, last channel recall, scan, and memory
save and recall functions. The repeater shift
can be varied between 0 and 999kHz, I
programmed this for 100kHz to suit 10m
operation but other shifts (eg 600kHz) could
be useful if you’re using, say, a 2m
transverter with the rig.

The transceiver comes supplied with an
adjustable mobile mounting bracket, mic
clip, a fused DC power lead and a 17-page
user instruction booklet. An internal speaker
is fitted to the lower case lid of the trans-
ceiver, and a 3.5mm jack socket is also
fitted at the rear which lets you plug in an
external speaker if you wish. That’s it, a no-

nonsense, easy to use, rig to get
you on to 10m. So let’s see how

it performed on-air.

IN USE

THE OPERATION OF the trans-

ceiver was very simple, as long
as I kept to the pre-set 10kHz

steps and within minutes of
connecting it up to my power

supply and antenna I was having
my first contact on 29.600MHz FM. Over the
review period, 10m was certainly lively dur-
ing the daytime, with plenty of European,
Russian, and both North and South Ameri-
can stations coming in. One such station
was Ray, DL2GG/YV5, in Caracas, Ven-
ezuela, romping in at exceptional strength
on FM one lunchtime working G stations.

As well as direct FM operation, I was able
to operate through a number of 10m FM
repeaters across 29.610 to 29.690MHz.
Some of these, typically North American
ones, require a CTCSS tone for access,
which the AE485 isn’t equipped with. How-
ever, I did successfully operate through a
number of repeaters in areas around the
world. I must say, though, that I often pre-
ferred simplex, as the overall multipath dis-
tortion was rather less. If you’ve ever oper-
ated HF FM in an ionospheric fading environ-
ment you’ll know that signals often become
quite distorted as a result of this.

The traditional DX modes are of course,
CW and SSB and, together with various
data modes such as PSK31, these are the
mainstay of most HF operation (the AM
mode included instead of CW on the AE485
revealing its design origins as a mass-user
CB rig). This mass-production does, how-
ever, make it economic enough to be placed
on to the amateur market, which we can’t
argue with! The transceiver did, in fact,
operate reasonably well on SSB, with re-
ports on my transmit audio being well up to
those of a top-flight amateur transceiver
costing much more - no wide transmit splat-
ter here!

I felt the receive bandwidth was a little on
the wide side, with the occasional adjacent
SSB signal sometimes ‘splitching’ through.
But then 10m isn’t usually an overcrowded
band, and I never found this to be a problem
in use on SSB. A slight limitation I did find
was that I couldn’t always accurately ‘net’ on
to a station calling CQ, or call in at the end of
an existing contact, without sometimes be-
ing up to a few hundred Hertz off-frequency

40

RadCom ♦ January 2001

ReviewReview

Review

ReviewReview

Multimode Transceiver

due to the 1kHz minimum transmit
steps. But even with this, calling in-
variably brought a response from the
other station and I found that a quick
explanation of the rig’s 1kHz incre-
ments was always understood and
acknowledged by the other station.
They typically just continued to keep
their RIT switched in for the remain-
der of the contact.

The ‘step’ button let me alter the
1kHz setting of the frequency display, but
this didn’t mean the transceiver tuned across
the band in 1kHz steps - after 10kHz it ‘rolled
round’ again, ie 8 kHz, 9 kHz, 0 kHz, 1 kHz
etc, without incrementing the 10kHz digit
when ‘0’ kHz digit was reached. This meant
that finding SSB signals over a range of,
say, 100kHz or so was a bit of a two-handed
affair in looking around 10 segments of
10kHz each, but I quickly got used to this.

FM was no problem whatsoever, with
stations typically using 10kHz steps as op-
erating ‘channels’. Potential CW operation
does suffer from this step limitation though,
and naturally there’s no CW key input jack.

The memory channels store the frequency
but not the operating mode or repeater off-
set. But in use I tended to use these as
handy ‘scratch pad’ memories when tuning
around, particularly on SSB, making QSYing
back an easy job. The ‘last used frequency’
button was also quite handy, this remem-
bered the frequency which I’d either last
transmitted on or listened to for at least a few

seconds, again letting me QSY back very
quickly.

The user manual doesn’t give circuit or
mic connection details and so I didn’t test
the transceiver on CW or data modes as
this would need a bit of circuitry experimen-
tation. But using a program such as DigiPan
on PSK31 overcomes 1kHz step size and
receive filter bandwidth limitations, and the
transceiver would certainly be a powerful
QRP tool using this mode.

LABORATORY TESTS

THESE SHOW THE receiver to be ad-
equately sensitive as well as quite sensitive
given its intended use in terms of blocking
and other strong-signal rejection. The re-
ceive intermodulation rejection (where off-
frequency signals combine internally to form
an on-frequency interfering signal) wasn’t
up to that of an expensive top-flight purpose-
built amateur transceiver, also the SSB re-
ceive bandwidth which was, as I found on
air, a little wider than usual. But one would

expect this and once again, 10m
isn’t usually the busiest of bands
strong-signal wise.

On transmit, just over 25W
maximum was produced on both
FM and SSB modes, the operat-
ing frequency being accurate to
within a few tens of Hertz. Trans-
mit harmonics were nicely sup-
pressed, something which sur-
prised me at first, showing the
internal filtering to be very effec-

tive. The transmit IMD (ie the amount of
splatter you’re likely to cause) again wasn’t
that of a rather more expensive top-flight rig,
but it certainly wasn’t as bad as I’ve seen on
some transmitters!

CONCLUSIONS

THE ALBRECHT AE485S is an easy-to-
use transceiver for 10m FM and SSB, it’s
also very lightweight and ideal for taking
along with you on holiday for a spell of DX
operation. The 1kHz minimum transmit
steps are a slight limitation for SSB working,
and no CW mode is available, but the re-
ceive clarifier allows received stations to be
tuned in correctly.

The transceiver has recently been re-
duced in price to £169.95. Our thanks go to
Martin Lynch and Sons (tel: [phone])
for the loan of the transceiver for review. If
you order from ML&S before the end of
January 2001 and quote 'RadCom', you can
claim free carriage. ♦

All measurements carried out on 29.000MHz in USB mode unless stated.

LABORATORY RESULTS

Blocking

Measured as increase over 12dB SINAD level of interfer-
ing signal, unmodulated carrier, causing 6dB degrada-
tion in 12dB SINAD on-channel signal.

SSB AM FM

+100kHz: 85.9dB 74.2dB 87.5dB

+1MHz: 93.5dB 81.8dB 92.6dB

+10MHz: 104.4dB 98.6dB 98.1dB

3rd Order Intermodulation Rejection

Increase over 12dB SINAD level of two interfering signals giving identical 12dB
SINAD on-channel 3rd order intermodulation product, measured at 21.4MHz.

SSB A M FM

20kHz spaced signals: 54.9dB 53.8dB 55.8dB

40kHz spaced signals: 55.1dB 53.9dB 55.9dB

SSB IMD Performance

Measured with a two-tone AF signal at onset of Tx ALC, results given as
dB below PEP level.

3rd Order 5th Order 7th Order 9th Order 11th Order

+ve: -31dB -33dB -41dB -39dB -38dB

-ve: -31dB -41dB -50dB -43dB -47dB

S-Meter Linearity

SSB AM FM

Sig Level Rel Level Sig Level Rel Level Sig Level Rel Level

S1 1.40 µV pd -38.6dB 2.18 µV pd -36.0dB 1.68 µV pd -28.9dB

S3 2.83 µV pd -30.8dB 4.18 µV pd -30.4dB 3.08 µV pd -23.7dB

S5 7.59 µV pd -22.2dB 10.6 µV pd -22.2dB 6.56 µV pd -17.1dB

S9 97.3 µV pd -0dB ref 64.3 µV pd 0dB ref 48.5 µV pd 0dB ref

S9+30 825 µV pd +18.7dB 1.31 µV pd +19.7dB 738 µV pd +23.9dB

TX Power / Current Consumption

Connected to stabilised 13.8V DC
using supplied DC lead

Max Power: 26.3W (5.6A)

Min Power: 1.85W (2.85A)

RECEIVER

Image Rejection

1st image: 92.5dB

2nd image: 78.7dB

TRANSMITTER

Sensitivity

Input level in µV pd required to give 12dB SINAD

Freq SSB AM FM

28.00 0.19 0.25 0.23

29.00 0.21 0.25 0.23

29.69 0.22 0.26 0.23

Harmonics

2nd: -67dBc

3rd: -75dBc

4th: -77dBc

5th: -72dBc

6th: <-90dBc

7th: <-90dBc

SSB Selectivity

-3dB: 3.58kHz

-6dB: 3.78kHz

-10dB: 4.36kHz

-20dB: 5.00kHz

-40dB: 6.05kHz

-60dB: 7.14kHz

41RadCom ♦ January 2001