Matt’s review of the BST-1
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Matt, who shared this review of the BST-1 car shortwave receiver:
Overall: a good sensitive receiver, with a very inventive interface. I am looking forward to my long commutes for a change.
Using the FM RDS info on the car radio is a stroke of genius.
Performance: Miles ahead of my old MFJ 3 band heterodyne converter. I could hear 2 or 3 stations in the day, maybe 6 or 8 at night. With this new receiver during my morning and evening commutes in the NE US, I can hear dozens of stations day or night. Performance is roughly on par with a decent shortwave portable using the built in whip. I get 6070 Canada listenable 2 out of 3 days, 9580 Australia one out of 4 days in the morning, Radio Romania is an S5-8 beacon in the evenings.
Quirks: when the receiver is powered down, it does not save the music/speech bandwidth setting. It always comes up in the speech mode.
Also, when you are in tune mode and wrap around from 0 kHz to 33 MHz or vice versa, there is a glitch. Instead of scanning on the even 5 kHz intervals, it changes to scanning on the 3 and 8 kHz or 2 and 7kHz intervals: 32.003, 32.008, 32.013, 32.018, etc. instead of 32.000, 32.005, 32.010, etc. If you go back to preset frequencies, scan, and then go back to tune mode, it is back to normal.
I have only seen spurious signals around 2 MHz or so. I think it is some 15 MHz broadcasters bleeding through - only one or two usually. No other spurious signals apart from this seen yet.
Suggestions: restrict the tune mode to the shortwave bands to save time slogging through all that dead space between broadcasting segments (toggle all or band only tune?)
Make it so you can switch the AM broadcast filter in and out, maybe with an attenuator. I live over 50 miles from the nearest high powered AM station, and it would be nice to be able to BC/LW DX. The receiver is quite sensitive down there. On 1700khz where the filter doesn't have much of an effect I can hear an AM station 80 miles away. Instructions on putting in a manual switch to do the same would be good as an alternative to this.
Thanks for sharing your review, Matt! I agree that the BST-1 is surprisingly sensitive, especially for a mobile receiver.