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Earlier this week, I received a message from my good friend, Mike, who lives south of Houston in Galveston County, Texas. Mike noted:
Here in Texas, we’re still dealing with the impact of hurricane Harvey.
[…]The absolute best hurricane information came from AM 740 KTRH Houston. A 50,000 Watt AM transmitter that covers a major portion of the gulf coast.
I’m learning that the Corpus Christi AM news station was evacuated and secured operations. KTRH kicked in and served the listening public very well.
I haven’t heard from Mike in a couple of days and, since then, Harvey has caused unprecedented levels of flooding in south Texas. I hope he’s doing okay and hope to hear from him soon.
Indeed, I hope SWLing Post readers in the affected area, their friends and family have all made it to safety.
I carved out about two hours of my afternoon and spent the entire time comparing the S-8800 to the Tecsun PL-880 and the Sony ICF-SW7600GR. I tested the radios on several shortwave bands and in both AM and SSB modes.
On Sunday, we discovered that mediumwave performance is lacking on the S-8800. Not so on shortwave!Check out this short video:
In my comparisons, the Tecsun S-8800 has consistently outperformed the PL-880 and Sony ICF-SW7600GR on the shortwave bands. The AGC is pretty stable and sounds much like that of the PL-880 when QSB (fading) is present. Sensitivity is better than the PL-880, though, so the S-8800 can dig those signals out of the noise a little better.
Note, too, I had to pick up both the PL-880 and ‘7600GR in my hand to obtain the best performance–that additional grounding gave each a slight boost. Quite common for portables. The S-8800 didn’t require this.
After I returned home yesterday, it struck me that perhaps a longer telescopic whip gave the S-8800 an advantage. Turns out, it’s only three inches longer than the PL-880’s whip.
Next, I need to spend a little time with the S-8800 mapping out any birdies on HF–a tedious process. I hope to start on that today.
To follow updates on this yet-to-be-released receiver, follow the tag: Tecsun S-8800.
RadioShack’s second bankruptcy in two years may have brought its company-owned stores to the edge of oblivion, but it has apparently sparked a renaissance among the chain’s approximately 425 independent franchisees.
As Wisconsin dealer-owner PJ Kruschel explains, inventory is beginning to flow again, and the departure of the corporate stores has ramped up customer demand and unshackled RadioShack dealers from restrictions on expansion.
Kruschel, who will grand-open the country’s first post-bankruptcy RadioShack tomorrow in Baraboo, Wis., shared his observations in an email to TWICE, which we posted below with his permission:
“I’ve owned a RadioShack dealer store for the past ten years and just opened a new store a couple weeks ago. It’s the first new RadioShack since the latest bankruptcy. There is another store opening in Utah and a couple more in Tennessee coming in the near future, but I’m the first.[…]
This is encouraging news indeed and verifies what I’ve seen at the two RadioShack franchises I’ve visited since the bankruptcy. In both cases, they are serving the needs of a local community–their inventory and services have always included products and services the corporate stores weren’t allowed to offer. RadioShack franchises have always had more freedom to expand their offerings, but now it appears they can even expand their locations. Excellent news, I say.
Between 1600 – 2015 UTC on August 21, 2017, as the solar eclipse swept across the nation, I captured much of the lower 2 MHz of the radio frequency spectrum. I used a Microtelecom Perseus SDR, a 130? inverted L with four radials, and lots of disk space. In doing so, I have created a permanent record of this portion of the RF spectrum during the solar eclipse.
I am making the spectrum capture files available for your analysis and research. Each file contains a 5 minute segment. If you download a group of files, they will play in succession.
You can use the demo version of the Perseus software or any other software that can read the Perseus data, such as Linrad or HDSDR. You cannot use just an audio player to play the files, even though they have .wav extentions.
Should you perform any analysis or otherwise make use of the files, I’d like to hear from you in the comments below.
Special thanks to Jav, K4JH, for donating the bandwidth for this effort.
Many thanks, Dan and Jav for making these files available for download! Someday, if I can find the bandwidth and space to upload them, I’ll also share the spectrum recordings I made.
The flea-powered Ozy Radio has begun testing on 5045 kHz in the 60-meter band. First noted here in Australia on August 28, the station has been missing for several years from its former 3210 kHz allocation. The location has been reported as Razorback, New South Wales, but I have not been able to confirm this yet. The transmitter power and the type of antenna are also unknown at this time. Observations by myself and other Australian listeners have noted the station operating between 0600 and past 1300 UTC.
The signal into Mount Evelyn, Victoria (at a guess, about 800 km from the reported transmitter site) is very strong – about 10 dB over S9! This is a much better signal than was ever heard on the old 3210 outlet. Whatever has been done at the station appears to be working very well! I believe there could be a very good chance that Ozy Radio will be heard internationally!
The current programming consists of test transmission announcements, relays of the Australian Independent News service, and continuous antique pop music from the 50s and 60s. Cheekily, the station is also using the Radio Australia interval signal, while the RA kookaburra also fires off every now and again throughout the broadcasts. I’m not sure how the ABC feels about that!!
Here is a short video I prepared of the test announcement and email address given out at 1356 UTC.
Good luck with hearing Ozy Radio!
Rob VK3BVW
UPDATE: The current power output is 500w and the location is confirmed as Razorback, near Camden approx 45 km southwest of Sydney. Thanks to John Wright for the eQSL statement and information. John also reports that reception reports have been received from as far away as Germany.
Rob Wagner, VK3BVW, is the author of this post and a regular contributor to the SWLing Post. He also blogs at the Mount Evelyn DX Report.
My schedule last week made it impossible to carve out the dedicated time I needed to begin an S-8800 evaluation.
Yesterday, however, I spent the afternoon with my family at Richland Balsam, the highest point on the Blue Ridge Parkway (6,000′ ASL) and a completely RFI-free zone. I brought the Tecsun S-8800 and a few other portables along for the ride–namely the Digitech AR-1780, the C.Crane CC Skywave and the Panasonic RF-2200.
I had just enough available space on my smart phone to record this one short video:
Let’s be clear: comparing any modern radio with the RF-2200 on mediumwave is hardly fair.
For one, the RF-2200 has been out of production for a few decades.
Secondly (what I never finished saying in the video is that) the RF-2200 has a large rotatable ferrite bar antenna that provides excellent gain. The RF-2200 simply wipes the floor with all of my modern portables as their ferrite bar antennas are a fraction of the size.
In other words, the RF-2200 was engineered to rule mediumwave like a boss.
On shortwave, the RF-2200 does a fine job, but isn’t nearly as accurate and stable as modern DSP receivers.
Spoiler alert
Still, as the video indicates, my final review of the Tecsun S-8800 will indicate that it is not a receiver for the serious Mediumwave DXer. It’s been my experience that few shortwave portables are excellent on both HF and MW.
At home, tuned to local station 880 AM.
Of course you can’t tell from the video, but the S-8800 actually sounds brilliant when tuned to a relatively strong/local AM station, but either a lack of sensitivity or internal noise makes MW DXing a challenge.
I spent the better part of two hours yesterday evaluating its daytime MW performance–the video is pretty indicative of my findings. The S-8800 struggles with weak stations, but does a fine job with strong ones. It’s overall audio fidelity almost matches that of the RF-2200 when tuned to a strong broadcast. I’ve yet to test evening MW
The S-8800 still has some birdies on MW, but they’re not the loud warbling kind found on the previous model. Tecsun did properly address this, though in full disclosure, I haven’t fully explored the shortwave bands yet.
Shortwave?
I suspect the S-8800’s performance on shortwave will be much better than mediumwave because the previous S-8800 showed excellent results. As long as sensitivity wasn’t harmed while addressing the DSP birdies, I expect it’ll give the PL-880, PL-680 and Sony ICF-SW7600GR a run for their money.
Still…the lesson learned yesterday?
The Panasonic RF-2200 is the indisputable champion of mediumwave!
There’s a quick and dirty video review of the AR-1780 by Peter VK3YE, which highlights a few interesting quirks (if that’s the right word!) with this receiver. Some birdies, specs that don’t appear accurate, and a query over one of the bandwidth settings. Well worth a look!:
Peter (VK3YE) has done an excellent job indeed summing up the AR-1780–his notes and comments mirror my own. I would have never caught that oddity with the 1.2 to 1 kHz bandwidth reversal.
Earlier this week, I received a message from my good friend, Mike, who lives south of Houston in Galveston County, Texas. Mike noted:[…]The absolute best hurricane information came from AM 740 KTRH Houston. A 50,000 Watt AM transmitter that covers a major portion of the gulf coast.
