I'd agree with you about the Tecsun radios, Jim. I bought a PL-660 last
year, before Christmas.
The only gripes that I have are:
a) the cheap Chinese batteries that came with it had a short life. I
topped off the charge after installing the batteries, and the next time
that I tried to use the radio, they wouldn't take a charge.
b) no BFO. I was going to listen to the "Night of Nights" transmission
Friday night, and I discovered the hard way that it doesn't do CW. Good
thing that I had the K3 and KX3!
73 de Jim - AD6CW
On 7/16/2013 7:37 AM, Jim Brown wrote:
Those looking for a broadcast receiver would do well to look at the
Tecsun product line, imported by the same folks who import Kaito.
There are a dozen or so models ranging in cost from about $45 to about
$100. About half of them are DSP radios using a Silicon Labs chip, and
yield excellent performance on both AM and FM. Most of them cover LW
(below the AM broadcast band), all of them cover "short wave"
broadcast bands, and a few cover the part of the VHF spectrum used by
aircraft. A few models have detectors for SSB. AM bandwidth is
switchable to provide audio bandwidth in several steps between 1 kHz
and 6 kHz.
I have three radios using the Silicon Labs chips -- a $100 Sony
(discontinued, selling for $500 used if you can find them), a Tecsun
380 ($45), and an Insignia FM-only HD radio sold by Best Buy ($50).
The RF performance can only be described as amazing. Here in the Santa
Cruz mountains, I wanted to hear KQED from San Francisco, with a
mountain between us. With a long Yagi pointed at it, KQED was noisy on
both my Technics ST9030 and Carver TX11B, but nearly full quieting on
all three DSP radios. More impressive, the Technics and Carver heard
full quieting signals from 1,000 W stations 50 miles away on 91.5 and
91.9, and nothing but noise on 91.7. All three DSP radios hear a
station on 91.7 nearly full quieting from near San Luis Obispo, and
off the back of the Yagi!
The Tecsun and Insignia radios run on AA batteries or a wall wart, can
be connected to an external antenna with a clip lead, and have a
headphone output that can feed a high quality audio system. .BTW -- I
also own three of the GE Super Radio III, which is one of the best AM
broadcast receivers around. It was designed by a consortium of
broadcast engineers in the 70s, when they were trying to "save AM." It
has a 10 kHz notch filter, and the IF bandwidth is switchable to >20
kHz. It's been out of production since the marketing turkeys who
bought the RCA name bought the division of GE that made it, but the
original GE Super Radio is still around on the auction sites.
Very thorough engineering reviews (and a lot of other great material)
by Brian Beezley, K6STI, of the Technics, Carver, and Sony receivers
can be found at http://ham-radio.com/k6sti/index.html
73, Jim K9YC
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