Jim wrote: > Those looking for a broadcast receiver would do well to look at the > Tecsun product line... > 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, > ...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 Tecsun 380 > ...The RF performance can only be described as amazing.
I agree. I expected only passable performance...but AM and FM broadcast band performance is better than anything I've used in 45 years as an avid AM listener (and FM is equally impressive). The 390 is noticeably better than the 380 on AM. It is a wider radio than the 380, so it has room for a significantly longer ferrite rod antenna. It also has FM stereo and a very handy line-in jack, both of which the 380 lacks. > The Tecsun ... radios run on AA batteries or a wall wart... I found it better to use NiMH rechargeable batteries and take advantage of the built-in recharge-from-USB circuitry. The radio allows one to specify that NiMH cells are installed instead of normal AA-cells. The 390 comes with a case with bottom pocket to store: (1) Stereo ear buds, (2) USB charging cable, (3) Clip-on wire antenna, (4) 3.5mm stereo cable to connect an external AF device to the 390's line-in jack (Great for using with an MP3 player). > I also own three of the GE Super Radio III, which is one of the best AM > broadcast receivers around. I have an *original* Super Radio (not model II or III), plus a model III. My original model always performed much much better than the III, but the model III had a terrible history of significant QA problems. All are very large portable radios by modern standards. My small Tecsun 380 and 390 grossly outperform these old units. I haven't been much concerned about the AM broadcast performance of the KX3. When a rather small SDR AM/FM broadcast radio like the Tecsun 390 is available at trivial cost, I don't require a ham rig to attempt to match it for broadcast reception. There are now many SDR radios available for give-away prices that have outstanding performance, ranging from these Tecsun BCB receivers to the Baofeng micro-size VHF/UHF HTs. Both are useful SDR-technology radios to supplement the SDR KX3. 73, Mike / KK5F ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
