Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Nick Booras, who writes:
Hi Thomas
I posted a video of this radio compared to a couple other popular radios. Thought your viewers might be interested. This 368 is a significant improvement over the 360 and 365.
Thank you so much for sharing this, Nick! People who love the form factor of the PL-360 and PL-365, should appreciate the new Tecsun PL-368. Thank you again!
Click here to check out the Tecsun PL-368 on eBay (partner link supports the SWLing Post).
Ich habe einen Tecsun PL368 direkt aus China gekauft. Das Radio ist aber auf Kurzwelle sehr “Hand empfindlich”. Man sucht Sender und findet diese, wenn man das Gerät auf den Tisch stellt und die Hand entfernt rauscht es stark. Die Tecsun PL360 haben diese Eigenschaft nicht. Sonst ist das Konzept gut. Wenn auch die Tastatur für Hände die das manuelle Arbeiten gewohnt sind, etwas klein ist. Aber kein Vorteil ohne Nachteil.
How is the AGC on SSB. The other models were worst than terrible on AGC action with the terrible pumping?
The Soft mute is also another terrible feature that cant be disabled.
The S-meter also needs improving to make it useless when using loop antennas to peak or nulls signals. They should really call the s-meters “wiggle meters” because they are next to useless.
I have the CountyComm GP-5 SSB (gen 3) and have enjoyed the heck out of it for a long time, but one real drag is the lack of that numerical keypad; there are a few tricks to somewhat mitigate the pain of bandscanning on the GP-5/PL365/PL360 but those tricks are still a compromise… and repeatedly swiping that tuning wheel gets wearying. So I LOVE this one having a real numerical keypad! That alone is worth a look for me. I will wait until an export version is available but I will definitely try it.
And I agree with the previous review — soft muting is really quite unpleasant. It’s not necessarily a deal breaker for me but I don’t think it was EVER a very good idea; certainly as a manufacturing trend it has been annoying and puzzling to me, and in my opinion has it long outlived any usefulness designers might once have somehow believed it had… and now it needs to simply go away. On a number of Tecsun radios it can be disabled, but it just makes zero sense for shortwave receivers from the start, and I look forward to the demise of that bug-not-a-feature.
Still, I am looking forward much more to trying out the PL368!
Mike
N0TLD
One wonders when Tecsun will disable, or at least give us an option to disable, soft mute. Hearing WWCR pop in and out makes for an experience that is really quite unpleasant.
From the videos that I have seen the PL-330 suffers from the same problem while the PL-990 seems to either have a very gentle or nonexistent soft mute.
It is essential to remove the MW antenna if you have pulled out the rod antenna and want to receive shortwave. otherwise you have a lot of disturbances. the antenna is very thin, i always use the telescopic antenna with the tecsun 360 series, the antenna of the 360 ??devices is much thicker and therefore mechanically more stable. the overall impression is a great device that can always accompany you.