KC4YLV wrote:

The reason I'm drawn to the 471 are its single band construction with

robust filtering, I already have a mint 271a and think the 471 would match well. Can anybody comment as to the suitability and/or performance of the ol' 471 on satellite?

Excellent satellite rig; I still use one. One mod I did was to replace the front-end device. The rig comes with a 3SK48 but I replaced this with a BF981; its a straight drop-in replacement and needs no re-alignment. Its Q10 on the RF-YGR board. Ticklish to make sure you have the replacement device the right way round though; email me direct if you want deeper instructions. Claimed to give a 10dB gain improvement with a noise figure reduction of about 2.5dB overall. Only thing is I'm not sure if this device is still available (I did the mod in 1993).