Falconry World

The new Marshall tracking receiver has finally been released.
After waiting for months since its announcement at the 2007 falconers fair in the UK mine arrived just in time for the end of the season. Falconry telemetry is as essential today as having a bird, no responsible falconer should fly without it. So what makes a good receiver, well the new telemetry receiver from Marshall brings digital technology to falconry . What this means to me is that, instead of having lots of hiss and background noise I can hear the bleep from the transmitter loud and clear. The receiver is a big jump from the old receivers and I can say that put next to the golden bench mark of receivers the Luksander MN10 this product out performs it in sensitivity with 151db that’s the same as the old Marshall stealth receiver that cost well over £1000 in the UK.

I’ve always used the Marshall telemetry system for receivers and personally found them top notch. I’ve only updated now because I was stupid enough to leave my bag with my receiver in the car and it got stolen. I had used it for over 12 years and it still worked like new with only one service to update the yagi. The new Field Marshall includes some essential features of the old receiver like range settings switch to go from far, medium and near to adjust for the distance of the bird. I always test the receiver and TX before casting my bird off and always use the near switch. My old receiver would pick up my TX on near from about 3 feet without the yagi being open. The new receiver has been re-tuned and works out in the garden (about 10 meters).

Digital technology.

The biggest change in making this system better in tracking your bird is the digital tuning which means you don’t have to dial a knobs to tune into a TX and then fine tune, you simply put the TX frequency into the receiver.

So You can see from this image that my TX is tuned to 173.205. That is the exact frequency of my Marshall transmitter as stamp.

I can now get a good signal without using headphones from over three miles away with the TX hooked up on a low branch in my back garden which is in a built up area. I could barely get a signal from over one mile before so that is a massive improvement, and could make all the difference in a real life situation when my bird is down on a kill (with abit of luck). The new receiver uses a new digital filter pass which eliminates unwanted background noise and that’s what I think is making such a big improvement in performance. The digital receiver is also claimed to be water resistant which is handy as it’s always raining in England.

New removable handle.

Another small change that for me is really useful is the removable handle. This is really useful as I can now fit the receiver into a small ruck sack with the handle off. The handle is simply slotted in and then screwed tight to fix to the body.

With the handle off the receiver can also lye flat on a car seat or dash board whilst you drive. For this I use a small FM transmitter that are sold to send ipod music wireless to your car radio. This means I can drive the car whilst tuned into the car stereo listening to the signal from my TX. You can off course still connect an omni whip antenna to fit on the car, if you don’t have one, get one.

New yagi.

The new receiver has an updated yagi with better connections and a more secure fastening system for when the yagi is folded away. This increased connectivity improves over all performance and shouldn’t suffer from oxidisation on the contacts which could reduce performance. As with everything improvements in design make older models seem lacking but that’s progress. Other great new features on the yagi is the fact that with the addition of an extra long cable the yagi can be unattached to the receiver body and the handle can be used to fit on the yagi, so if your in the car you could put your yagi out of the window whilst still listening to the signal in the car. I recommend you get your passenger to do this whilst moving or get the dog to drive….

Other features.

Because the new Marshall falconry receiver doesn’t work with internal crystals you can move between any frequency. So if you say were on the 216 band and want to change to 173, then the system just needs sending back to Marshall’s and they can change it. Just a quick note on that topic, though I will be doing a more detailed blog in the future, the 216 frequency in the UK has been sold to a digital video and radio broadcaster so you can expect huge interference very soon. I strongly recommend moving over to 173 if your thinking of buying. Other new features is the control panel is now much better lit. This is very useful for night tracking or if your lamping with say a Goshawk. One other thing that has changed is the batteries. They are no longer 9volt. It now uses AAA. This is good but I have a load of unused 9V Duracell that are now useless to me, still if that’s my only complaint it can’t be bad.

Summary

All in all the best on the market, hands down. All that matters to a falconer in tracking a bird is that it works. Well this works, and works well. Used with headphones this gives you the best chance you’re going to get in retrieving a lost hawk. More signal strength, better direction in tracking, less interference, make this the strongest most pin point receiver on the market. The removable handle, smaller yagi and body are all nice features that really make this a big improvement. Time will only tell if this can last as long as my old receiver. So the catch….This must be a lot more expensive with all that extra stuff. Apparently not. At $895 dollars its the same price as the old receiver and is being sold in England by Marshall direct for £450, check out www.marshallradio.co.uk . So no excuses, everyone should have a good receiver and this is now the unit which all other receivers should be judged.