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Questions On Various Tecsun PL-*** Series AM/FM/SW

S

Schroedingers Cat

Could you please refresh my memory about the various Tecsun models?

What are the differences? I know some have SSB USB/LSB and some don't.

In particular, which of these models has the digital signal meter, and what are the ranges of digits? Doesn't one go from 20-99 and another 00 to 99? And yes, I know the numerical dB scale is not completely linear, consistent across all frequencies, and is compressed at the low and high ends.

Is it possible there is a model with both SSB AND the digital signal meter?

Are some of the other brand models like Grundig and CCrane essentially identical to certain models of Tecsun?

These are some models I am looking at.

Tecsun PL-310
Tecsun PL-380
Tecsun PL-360
Tecsun PL-660
Tecsun PL-880
 
pl-660

SC,

The only Tecsun I'm familiar with is the PL-660. It has USB/LSB but not signal strength meter. I also have a PL-606 that's the opposite -- no SSB but does have signal strength. It certainly would be nice to have both in one Tecsun radio!

-- Neil
 
My PL-310 and PL-880 both have the digital "signal strength" display, although it is only an indication of the relative r-f voltage across the r-f input terminals of the circuit board in the receiver -- not the field intensity of the e-m wave arriving at its loopstick antenna. The linearity of that display in showing the dB change of an applied r-f voltage has been measured (by others) and found to quite good, tracking within a dB or so. The display units are "dBµ" which presumably means dB with respect to 1 µV (not 1 µV/m).

The display range on the PL-880 is about 15 on a dead X-band channel to > 80 for a local AM broadcast station.

The PL-310 doesn't have SSB modes. The PL-880 does, and they work very well. The PL-880 also can be used to synchronously detect either the upper or lower sideband of a standard AM signal (A3a).

The PL-880 has noticeably better sound than typical Ultralight receivers (less distortion and wider audio bandwidth, including some bass).

Both of these receivers are quite sensitive on the medium-wave band, and inside my home using their internal loopsticks will produce a useful (but noisy) output from an arriving field intensity of 100 µV/m or so.
 
Thanks, Rich. Good to hear from you.

I did see a review of the PL-880 that said that the AM BCB (hats off to childhood neighbor, now K8RY, for insisting on calling "AM" this, for clarity) sensitivity wasn't nearly as good as you described, and that there were multiple images of strong signals, and you couldn't put any external antennas directly or inductively (like Mr. 88) without creating problems, even short of permanent desensitizing of the radio.

Further comments said or implied that these problems, except the external antenna overload, were fixed in later production.

Any comments on the PL-380 vs. the PL-310?
 
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What's the difference between the PL-390 and the PL-380? Price is much lower, but it says it not only has dual speakers, but better AM BCB performance due to a longer ferrite rod. Suspcious due to lower pricing, wondering what the downside is.

Thanks, David. The Sangean looks good, but has a 5 or 6 segment S meter. The digital S meter is very important, even though it is NOT an FI meter, for signal comparisons for which I am often asked by radio people here, which is how strong is their signal vs. another station or their satellite or translator, in a specific location.

Found the thread from four years ago.

http://www.radiodiscussions.com/sho...trength-Meters-On-The-Different-Tecsun-Models

Welcome to the board Neil, and thanks for your input.
 
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Antenna Factor

... The digital S meter is very important, even though it is NOT an FI meter, for signal comparisons ... how strong is their signal vs. another station or their satellite or translator, in a specific location. ...

Other big issues to account for in doing this even semi-accurately are having accurate knowledge of the gain of the receive antenna for each frequency compared, for the height and polarization of the receive antenna above the earth.

Below to (only partially) illustrate this is a NEC4.2 graphic showing how received fields vary with distance and height above the earth, from a very low-power FM transmit system.

Even the relative fields for different receive frequencies shown by such unqualified receive systems can produce inaccurate conclusions.

AFAIK, there is no public knowledge available for the Antenna Factor of loopstick and "whip" MF/HF/VHF antennas supplied with consumer-level receivers.

FM%20H%20Rad%20Ctr%207%20ft%20AGL.jpg
 
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Most signal reports are relative, no matter what the meter is. A station could read S5 but because of readability it could be more like S3 or S4, or be somewhere in between all three.

I'd go for the radio that had the best rep on overall performance.
 
boombox4 said:
Most signal reports are relative, no matter what the meter is. A station could read S5 but because of readability it could be more like S3 or S4, or be somewhere in between all three.

I'd go for the radio that had the best rep on overall performance.
Click to expand...

Thank's Rich, rtc, and boombox. I agree, in general, go for the best overall performance. I have decided to go for the Tecsun PL-390 as a general purpose, lower priced model for now. I may get a higher end one later with SSB with switchable USB/LSB. The PL-390 has stereo speakers, though reviews say they're not the greatest, and I'm hoping the radio will also sound good played though a docking station amplifier input. It also has an alarm, and thermometer, and a rechargeable battery USB port feature I can also use with a Lithium ion emergency charger and car starter for various devices. I think it also comes with a carrying case for extra protection.

I don't know how much better the new AM FI meters are, but the old ones had to be calibrated on each frequency, as the overall gain varied considerably with frequency. And any AM BCB or FM BCB FI meter reading varies with location and moving around, and particularly on FM, height above the ground and nearby obstructions and trees. The F(50,50) and F (50,10) are in general F(L,T) curves where location and time dimensions behave similarly. At a particular location L and time T, the FI on FM varies with location, where the 90th percentile of locations has the same predicted FI as the 90th percentile of times. There is a paper on this in the 5th Edition of the NAB Engineering Handbook, along with other interesting statistical graphs of FI curves at various frequencies and probabilities. They show one for Es and another for F2 layer propagation. Realize that 1% of the time is 0.24 hours per day, or 14 minutes and 24 seconds per day for Sporadic E at Low VHF channels, on average. One of the allotment software developers used this to design a 16 foot dish made out of Home Depot and Farm Supply Store materials, where he was able to vary both the azimuth and elevation angle, and was able to see and ID as many as 35 Channel 2 analogs in a single day. Now, you are lucky if you see CHBX Channel 2 Sault Ste. Marie, one of the few that were still operating analog the last I knew.
 
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I may be biased... Many of the radios I've used over the years -- Realistic TRFs, Superadios, the Walkmen and boomboxes I've used -- none of them had any meters... so from my perspective a meter is just another tool on the readout that may or may not have any usefulness. I go by how loud the station is relatively to others, to locals, or to loud regionals.

S0-S5, a simple scale. But that's just me. Hopefully it explains my view on it...

The PL-390 looks like a great radio. The little stereo speakers may not sound full as a PR-D5, but they're probably better than my Grundig G2 (which is a ultramini boombox based on another Degen/Tecsun design), as the case is bigger, more room for sound to develop. And you'll probably find the sound is great through headphones.

Be sure and let us all know how it goes. The prices I've seen on Amazon look really good.
 
I have always really liked tuning indicators, from the time I was very young. The first was a 1938 Westinghouse Table Radio with 6U5 Tube For an tuning indicator. It was my Grandmother's radio, and it had a great sounding Electromagnet speaker, and 5 tuned oscillator and antenna presets that had the worn out callsign tabs for WJR, CKLW, WFDF, WWJ, and WBCM. Before I came along, NARBA and upgrade oddities changed the order of the stations. Because CKLW moved from 1030 to 800, and WFDF moved from 1310 to 910, they had to change th order of the buttons to utilize the limited freqeuncy range presets, and new callsign tabs had to be made. At some point, the fifth button had been changed from WBCM 1440 to WCAR 1130, but the WBCM callsign button remained. It took me a long time to figure out how and why all that happened. In 1962, we got a Magnavox "Stereo Theater", but at the time, only the Phonograph was Stereo, because at that time, Stereo offerings were limited, and the Stereo FM upgrade was expensive. Anyway, it had a Tuning meter which further got me liking signal strength indicators. The Sony portable with a cassette player was the next in 1971. It had a great signal indicator meter also.
 
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I've been looking at bandscans of the PL-*** series. There is an AM bandscan video of the PL-390 done in Berkley, Michigan, so five of the now 50000 watt stations on the electronically tuned presets mentioned above are in the bandscan. Can't figure out why one was 5 dB less unless they were using their 10000 watt backup transmitter when he did the bandscan. It's not the pattern, either, becuase the major lobe is right in the general direction on Berkley. It seems to max out at 63 dB on the others on the AM. Another person made an FM bandscan video, but somehow managed to have a shadow over the signal strength meter.
 
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