This morning I had an hour to spare so I switched on the ¦Ìbitx and there was good propagation on 18 MHz. So I switched on the Drake R8 to compare the signals.
The R8 agc was set to off as the ¦Ìbitx does not have agc, preamp off as the ¦Ìbitx does not have an RF amplifier, and the bandwidth set to 2.3 kHz.
I swapped the antenna between the two sets several times and made a video which I uploaded on youtube.
In the video you may notice some difference on the digital readputs because I had initially not set the two sets on exactly the same frequency during the video , but later on I set both on the same frequency and they both tallied 100%.
As regards sensitivity both appeared to be approximately the same with the R8 having a slight edge on the ¦Ìbitx and obviously greater audio output of the R8 which was set at approximately half way while the ¦Ìbitx volume was full on.
Those wanting more audio could get one of the cheap available amplifiers such as
