Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, who shares the following procedure for calibrating the Tecsun S-8800. Dan received this procedure from Anna at Anon-Co:
Apparently there is a “hidden function” through which you can manually calibrate the SSB frequency display. Please follow the below calibration steps to see if it helps:
1) Turn on the device and set it to USB/LSB.
2) Now press & hold the “AM NORM.” button until you see the backlight blink twice (takes about 2 seconds).
3) Now press & hold the “MEMORY” button, until a certain value is shown on the display, for instance “6829”. This example value refers to a frequency like “xxx68.29 kHz”.
4) If you noticed a frequency deviation of 0.05 kHz up/down earlier, then you can use the main tuning knob to do the calibration. In the above-mentioned example, you would turn the main tuning knob to adjust the value to “6824” or “6834”.
Wow! Thanks for sharing this Dan! That’s two posts about S-8800 hidden features in one day. A record for sure! Readers: please comment if you know of other hidden features. I’m compiling a full list.
This is a very old review but I thought I’d offer a current experience with this very expensive receiver. I took possession of one on 1-24-24 and within 15-minutes had repacked that sucker right back up for return. Its SSB behavior was so appalling all I will say is a little $60.00 PL-330 smoked it, being able to easily perform ECSS on MW and HF with perfect stability, all it took was one calibration of the 330’s ssb and it works splendidly with no need of fine tuning on either MW or HF.
I also have a PL-880 which I calibrated five years ago that duplicates this level of table-top stability across all MW and HF, never requiring fine tuning, indeed both are always in either USB or LSB full time they are so excellently stable. Not the near $300,00 S-8800, that sucker won’t hold zero in a single frequency from sentence to sentence, and flat out is worthless on MW altogether! Very, very disappointing radio which is going right back from whence it came! At this price point its absolutely unacceptable for such crappy stability….
Hello … I have another question about hidden functions :
I have just new the S-8800e . Frequency was 300 Hz to high – I could calibrate without problems.
But another thing : The backlight brightness of the LCD-display is very low , to low …
Is there also anywhere a hidden function for increasing the backlight ???
Hi.
I have a Tecsun S-8800 and I would like to know how I can calibrate it.
Thank you for your help!
Nice find, Dan! However it’s hard to tell what this number really represents or what oscillator it tunes – at any rate the number does not represent kHz and Hz. It looks like the last digit changes the frequency in 2.5Hz steps (so 4 steps per 10Hz in-/decrement). The other calibration method known from the PL-880 also works on the S-8800, and while it’s just as unclear what oscillator that one tunes, there’s some indication that it tunes the BFO, so this one might be tuning the VFO.
At any rate, everyone wanting to play with this should jot down the number that shows up first, as this is obviously individual for each example of the 8800 and once you turned the dial, the radio doesn’t want a confirmation of the change and might keep the new value even when you reset the firmware.
So, the S-8800 may be tuned to plus or minus 50 Hz when using the fudge factor, which isn’t shown on the frequency display?