Shortwave listening and everything radio including reviews, broadcasting, ham radio, field operation, DXing, maker kits, travel, emergency gear, events, and more
IN THE EARLY 1930s, Bell Labs was experimenting with making wireless transatlantic calls. The communications goliath wanted to understand the static that might crackle across the ocean, so it asked an engineer named Karl Jansky to investigate its sources. He found three: nearby thunderstorms, distant thunderstorms, and a steady hiss, coming from … somewhere.
Jansky studied the hiss for a year, using a rudimentary antenna that looked like toppled scaffolding, before announcing its origin: The static was coming from the the galaxy itself. “Radio waves heard from remote space,” announced The New York Times in May 1933. “Sound like steam from a radiator after traveling 30,000 light-years.” Janksy had unwittingly spawned the field of radio astronomy.
Today, a replica of Jansky’s scope sits on the lawn in front of Green Bank Observatory, one of the four world-class public radio telescopes in the US. Along with the Very Large Array, Arecibo Observatory, and the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), it is the legacy of a boom time in federal investment in the field that began in earnest after World War II.
In the past several years, though, the National Science Foundation has backed away from three of those instruments. In 2012 the NSF published a review recommending that the foundation ramp down funding to Green Bank—just 11 years after it was finished—as well as the VLBA, which can resolve a penny from about 960 miles away. Three years later, the foundation asked Arecibo for management proposals that “involve a substantially reduced funding commitment from NSF.”
[S]upport for pure science in the US is always complicated, since it relies on the good graces of federal agencies and annual budgets. As funders balance building and operating new scopes with the old, while giving grants to the astronomers who actually use those instruments, something’s gotta give. And no matter what it is, the science will not be the same.
[…]THERE IS A new facility potentially on the horizon: The Next-Generation VLA (the VLA itself, while upgraded, is 40 years old). As currently envisioned, the ngVLA’s many antennas will together have 10 times the sensitivity and resolution as the VLA, at a wider range of frequencies. The primary array will have 214 18-meter antennas, spiraled across New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and Mexico. Nineteen smaller ones will sit close to the center, and 30 18-meterers will constellate the continent.[…]
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Diego Collado who writes:
My name is Diego Collado and I’m an 18 year old student from Barcelona,
Spain. First of all, thank you very much for your website. It is a great
place for getting to know the amazing yet sometimes mysterious world of
shortwave listening. It has also been particularly useful when having to
choose a radio for shortwave and mediumwave reception.
I’ve been an SWLer myself for a while now, but I’ve decided to actually
start my own show on Channel 292, rebroadcasting the radio programme I
do monthly at the local radio station in my neighborhood. It is called
“Centauros del Desierto“, broadcasting under the “Radio Collado” name
every first Saturday of the month at 19:00UTC on 6070 (Channel 292).
There is also a repetition of the show the Saturday after that at the
same hour, although this is prone to change if there is a conflict in
the schedule. I guess Channel 292 will warn if there is a schedule change.
Excellent, Diego! We will all look forward to listening to Centauros del Desierto on Channel 292, first Saturday of the month at 19:00UTC on 6070 kHz! Indeed, I’ll listen for you this Saturday (September 1).
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, 13dka, for the following guest post:
Tecsun S-8800 Review
by 13dka
Looking for a new toy again I recently revisited the Tecsun S-8800, which looked like it could replace both my battered old Grundig Satellit and my Tecsun PL-660. Being in production for a few years now, and with the “birdies” situation ironed out long ago, the S-8800 has gathered much acclaim by now but also a few somewhat contradicting reviews. For example, one review reports that the S-8800 can cope with larger antennas, another one states the exact opposite, one praises the MW performance, another one attests only average sensitivity, and only one mentioned an unpleasant detail I’m going to emphasize on in a bit.
All reviews touted the improved SW performance in AM and SSB though, and that was reason enough to make my own experiences. Testing it turned out to be a bit of an emotional rollercoaster though.
I hope I can share more than only redundant bits of information about the radio, and I’ll skip most of the general information you can read in most other reviews.
Off to the 13dka radio test site at the dike!
13dka’s SWL Happy Place
General
Like the technically somewhat similar Tecsun PL-880, the S-8800 is a triple conversion receiver and has 2 conventional IF stages, the third IF stage is using a Si4735 DSP chip again, providing the filters and all that jazz.
Tecsun seems to have thrown a lot more parts into it than in previous radios, plus a pretty big ferrite rod (covering 8-9/10th of the radio’s width) with individual LW and MW coils (most of the smaller receivers have only one coil), a 108mm telescopic whip and of course the “gun metal” knobs. Designing a radio with a rather simple front panel and making a remote control an integral part of the operation concept (like it is reality with TVs for a long time) is a charming oddball approach, in a way reviving an utmost luxurious feature of 1930s high-end radios. So let’s cut to the chase and talk performance:
Longwave and Mediumwave
On LW and MW, I first compared the S-8800 with my old Grundig Satellit 400 at home. The old clunker has similar dimensions, a big old speaker bass/treble controls and it was known to have an average sensitivity on the AMBC band in its time, when all the great, now vintage AM performers were still ubiquitous, so that’s rather a “Jay Allen average” than an “average of the mediocre AM radios of this millenium”. I think Jay Allen might rate it 3 stars.
Longwave
The first station I tuned in was the BBC LW transmitter network on 198kHz and it turned out a tad more noisy on the Satellit. Great! I could also pick up Medi1 and Kalundborg a smidge better than on the Grundig, and in the early evening, out at the beach I was picking up stations on all still populated channels on LW (minus 180kHz where it has one of the remaining birdies). The other new portables I currently own (PL-660, D-808) are far away (PL-660) and far, far, far away (D-808) from that kind of performance.
Mediumwave
Unfortunately that good impression vanishes gradually when leaving the long wave for the NDB band (still good) and finally medium wave. Before I left the house to test the radios on the electrically quiet beach again, I was checking out one of my favorite border case stations (low power station from The Netherlands on 1602kHz, whatever their name is this week) and that made very clear already that the S-8800 can’t hold a candle to the Satellit, at least not on the top end of the MW band. Despite all the noise indoors, on the Satellit I could easily recognize the song being played while the S-8800 didn’t pick up anything at all.
On the beach it turned out that – despite the ferrite rod being twice the size – I find it only marginally better than the PL-660, and not close enough to the little XHDATA D-808 (if you’ve read my D-808 review you already know that this little radio is almost on par with the Grundig on MW):
Of course I have read Thomas’ assessment of the AM performance so I was prepared to be underwhelmed. But at least you can connect some high gain MW antenna to make up for the missing sensitivity and be happy again, or can you?
A not so nice surprise
The unpleasant detail I mentioned before is: the Int/Ext Antenna switch does not turn off the internal ferrite bar antenna. Jay Allen mentioned it in his review, it was the only review with that detail and unfortunately I overlooked it. How does that matter?
The main issue is this: if you’re (like me) forced to use outdoor antennas to escape high indoor noise levels, the internal loopstick just won’t let you. The external antenna will just increase the SNR a bit when the station is strong enough anyway. Even in a low noise environment, the internal loopstick will needlessly add noise to the signal received from a high-performance active loop or FSL antenna.
That also explains a paragraph in Thomas’ S-8800 review:
“I also hooked up the S-8800 to my large horizontal loop antenna. This certainly did improve MW reception, but not as dramatically as I hoped. Additionally, it seemed to be very sensitive to RFI in my shack even when hooked up to the external antenna.”
There’s more external antenna idiosyncrasy: only the BNC jack is wired to the “Ext” position of the antenna switch, the “hot” (red) Hi-Z terminal is active when the switch is in the “Int”-position, it just seems to save you an alligator clip on the whip.
The dedicated “AM antenna” terminal was in part what sold the S-8800 to me. The label made me assume this would be specifically wired to the AM circuit but as it turns out it’s just a generic high impedance input and I really didn’t anticipate that the internal loopstick remains always active (or in case of the Hi-Z terminals, the retracted whip). Yes, technically you can connect an external antenna for MW, practically…YMMV.
To conclude this section, the final outcome of this antenna connector issue plus the not so brilliant MW sensitivity was that not even my active ML-200 loop (connected to the BNC-jack) could improve reception on 1602kHz enough to make the S-8800 get at least a bit into the ballpark of the Grundig with its loopstick antenna. The currently mounted small 80cm rigid loop on the ML-200 just couldn’t produce enough signal to lift the station over the noise that much.
Shortwave SSB
As the other reviews reported already, Tecsun has obviously worked on the AGC issues their former products had. I can confirm this so far, the AGC does not show the distorted onset of leveling anymore – unless the signal is very strong. But the leveling happens much faster than e.g. on the PL-880 so the remaining blasts of distortion are quite short:
A more relaxed AGC release time would save us most of those too. I noticed AGC pumping effects from strong signals in the spectrum neighborhood only with a big antenna connected. But unfortunately there is more…
Stuff you have to live with:
In his great review, Thomas mentioned the auto mute sometimes interfering with reception. I noticed this too (with all bandwidths on SSB) and I credited this to very low noise figures. When the bandwidth is narrow (=less noise) or if you have a very low noise floor anyway like when tuning through 25-30MHz, the receiver gets muted over the entire chunk of spectrum, just to intermittently and pretty suddenly pass the noise again. Sounds like a broken antenna cable and has some potential to confuse people:
Too bad that setting auto mute to ’00’ doesn’t actually turn it off in SSB mode so there’s likely no remedy for that.
On my example, there is absolutely no difference between the 3kHz and 4kHz SSB filters. A working 4kHz filter would have been a good choice for ECSS reception.
Another remaining quirk at least on my specimen of the S-8800 is a slight FM modulation of an oscillator in SSB, particularly with strong signals. You can hear it best if you create a heterodyne or listen to CW, the tone sounds a bit hoarse, so do voices and I’m not sure whether or not this could affect narrow-bandwidth digimiode decoding. The front panel (namely the bandwidth knob area) is quite susceptible for “hand capacity”, the frequency varies a bit when you move your hand in front of the S-8800. This is not uncommon with portables of course, but my D-808 for example has its “Theremin playing area” on the back of the radio.
In this clip you can hear both the “hoarse” modulation and my hand waving to you.
This leads me to calibration and frequency drift. The S-8800 can be calibrated on SSB (see the “Hidden features” section below), however this turned out to be a (too) fast moving target. I don’t know if it’s the VFO or the BFO but it is so temperature-dependent that 6°C temperature difference equates to a quite substantial (for SSB) drift of 150Hz. Whatever oscillator it is, it seems to lack any temperature compensation measures, with all the implications that may have on relaxed SSB listening, digimode decoding and ECSS reception when the temperature isn’t quite stable where you want to use it. After calibrating it, it’s often slightly off again within the same minute. My cheap little D-808 won’t drift even when I take it from an overheated apartment into a -5°C cold winter storm.
The good stuff
Now to the fun part! When I compared the SSB performance of the S-8800 with my PL-660 the first time, I found them very close for some reason. I could find only one weak station that came in noticeably better on the S-8800 and while I was happy that it wasn’t worse than the PL-660 I was also a bit disappointed.
Timeline: 0:00: PL-660, 0:10: S-8800 receiving the “Gander Radio” VOLMET.
Then I repeated the test a few days later, this time a bit more into the evening and the outcome was very, very different. The S-8800 won every single weak signal comparison with ease and sometimes in a way that made me think my PL-660 must be broken.
But then I could help the PL getting a lot closer by simply holding it in my hand, the difference was that I had placed the PL-660 differently so I could record both radios easier. The factor I forgot to put in the equation was that the S-8800 is absolutely not depending on anyone holding it to give it some counterpoise – that and the long whip is certainly a part of its advantage, and the receivers would be much closer when used with the same external antenna. With the radios just standing there tho (and that’s what most people will do with their radio instead of holding it in their hand), the difference is remarkable nonetheless and I also learned that you should always look and listen twice when testing radios!
When I repeated the test yet again but granted the PL-660/D-808 the litte bit of counterpoise they seem to need (I let them rest on the car door instead of holding them), the results were not that unequivocal anymore. However, the receivers were 50% on par, the S-8800 was clearly better the other 50% and overall the other two receivers could not score a single point for them. I think that shows that the S-8800 really is a hair or three better. Beyond the increased sensitivity and minus the frequency drift, SSB reception feels more mature, the the S-8800 behaves more like a regular communications receiver now and the big speaker is a big plus. Of course that means there should be also an improved reception of…
Shortwave Broadcasts
I know that the S-8800 has inherited the “Enjoy broadcasting” and “BCL RECEIVER” lettering from the cheap S350, but after stepping the PL-660 and the S-8800 through all shortwave broadcast bands, I felt that’s exactly hat it was made for, and it shows!
There is no doubt that a big speaker can create the illusion of better reception, but I think I don’t fall for that easily and rather listen to the background noise and how intelligible the “content” is. While the comparison with the PL-660 often ended up in a tie when I subtracted the impact of the speaker in my mind, there were indeed some stations where the S-8800 had remarkably less noise than the PL-660. But of course the big speaker is giving the S-8800 a permanent edge on all reception cases, and it’s a real joy to listen! Combined with lower noise and a generally more stable signal (through better AGC) this made quite a difference between the two.
Bottom line is that when listening to shortwave broadcasts, the S-8800 gives you the warm and lush sound of yesterday’s famous receivers while it technically delivers the best performance of all Tecsun portables so far. If you fancy music programs on shortwave and if you don’t mind the price for the luxury and performance, you’ll enjoy this radio a lot.
FM
Short story: my specimen of the S-8800 lacks the very good FM band sensitivity of the PL-660 or the XHDATA D-808. While the latter radios present my favorite marginal case station 100km away fairly with some noise at sea level, the S-8800 just doesn’t receive that station at all, no matter how I position the whip. It’s not exactly worlds between them but considering that (assumedly) most of the FM receiver is in the Si4735 chip that it shares with a couple of great FM performers from the same company, this is a bit surprising.
Signal handling capabilities
The S-8800 is said to have a pretty robust frontend, which I found true but I want to put that a bit into relation. My “lonely beach/dike listening post” sports 2 abandoned steel flag poles of 6 and 8m height. They can serve as support for wire antennas, or easily be used as an antenna themselves by inductively coupling them to the receiver – IOW by winding a wire 2-4 times around the pole (you could use the Eiffel tower as an antenna this way) and connecting the other end to the radio.
For some reason this contraption produces quite massive output voltages, but I could always use it for a quick and thorough (and due to the location QRM-free!) reception improvement with my PL-660 anyway. Why?
The PL-660/880 have a 3-position (DX, Normal, Local) switch. I think it turns off the input preamp in the “Normal” postion and adds a simple attenuator circuit in the “Local” setting. The latter is sufficient to tame the output of all sorts of antennas (including the flag pole) enough to make my PL-660 work just fine with that on all bands.
The S-8800’s sensitivity switch on the other hand has only 2 positions and telling from the results it really only turns off the preamp. Now it actually acts up much less on the flag pole than the PL-660 in its comparable “DX” and “Normal” positions, so obviously Tecsun has put some effort into making the frontend more robust indeed. But it seems they thought “that should do, let’s ditch the 3rd (attenuator) position and save 3 resistors” and that left me with many (but tolerable) images across the entire shortwave above 3 MHz, and a heavily image-infested 160m band. BTW, a few soft images from (I guess) 49/41m blowtorches could be heard around 29MHz with only the whip.
A word on the audio
I believe that the “legendary” status of the Grundig and Zenith lines of world band receivers is partly owed to their big sound. They had their music loving and program listening audience in mind, and Tecsun’s choice of casing, big speaker, the bass and treble controls are certainly taking the same line.
Compared to my Satellit 400 (80s model, but still has much of that “legendary” sound), the Tecsun sounds a bit more boomy in the lower mids while having a less super-deep bass response than the Grundig, which also sounds more neutral. Besides these very unimportant distinctions, the S-8800 does sound big and that also helps reception – lacking low mid/bass content can impair intelligibility as well, and it causes more fatique on long DXing sessions.
The bass/treble shelving EQ is certainly more sophisticated than the Grundig’s, it has quite sharp cutoffs at very sensibly chosen frequencies, so turning the knobs down will leave the main chunk of the mid range completely unaffected and just helps removing rumble or the 5kHz beat frequency from a band neighbor, or add some nice hifi-highs and beefy low end when you turn them all the way up. In other words you can continuously blend the speaker sound from perfect “voice communications” style to “dad’s big old radio”.
Hidden functions
Of course the S-8800 has some unofficial “power off” and “power on” extra functions assigned to the number keypad on the remote (they all work by pressing and holding a number key for up to 10 seconds). Some are identical to the PL-880, some are different:
0.) I found calibrating the S-8800 on SSB works with the same method used on the PL-880: Tune to a station with a known frequency, switch to USB or LSB and use the fine tuning knob to tune for best audio/music playback. An alternative way of doing this is downloading a free spectrum analyzer app for your smartphone (“SpecScope”), tuning the radio 1kHz off frequency so you get a nice heterodyne tone on USB or LSB, then using the fine tuning knob to tune the tone to hit exactly the 1kHz mark on the analyzer display. Your last 2 (Hz) frequency digits will now show an offset frequency.
1.) Then press and hold the ‘0’ button until a ’00’ appears in the top right corner of the display and the last 2 digits of the frequency readout start flashing. Release the button and quickly use the fine tuning knob to reset the last frequency digits to ’00’ (the number on the top right corner should be changing while doing that), then immediately hold the ‘0’ key again to confirm – tadaa, the offset should be gone while the last 2 frequency digits show ’00’ now. This all needs to happen pretty quickly and with the right timing, so it may take a few attempts to get it right.
2.) With the radio off, button ‘2’ turns the LW band on/off.
3.) Press and hold the ‘3’ button while the radio is off to toggle between permanent and “intelligent” display illumination.
4.) When the radio is turned on, this button enables access to the extra functions of the number 6 and number 9 keys. The display will read “On” when you perform this the first time, doing it again will turn it off again.
5.) Radio on, set to FM band: this toggles between 75 (US) and 50 (anywhere else) microseconds deemphasis on FM.
6.) Radio on: When enabled using the ‘4’-button as described before, holding the ‘6’ will toggle the (annoying) dynamic bandwidth feature off and on. You can set this independently for AM and SSB. Ideally to zero, because it automatically resets your bandwidth setting and since this is happening in steps, it sounds quite strange. The PL-660 uses a stepless dynamic envelope following low pass filter (which is I believe what they called “DNR).
7.) This is still a mystery to me. On the PL-880, this button apparently controls the line out level on FM. On the S-8800 it (ostensibly) seems to control the S-meter bias with numbers running from ’00’ to ‘+99’ and ‘-99′ for all bands. Positive values reduces the S-meter display which made me curious if it rather controls AGC level or gain at some stage, but it really seems to affect the S-meter display only.
8.) Radio off: Toggles the seconds display on the main clock (when the clock is displayed instead of frequency).
9.) Another important one: this controls the threshold of auto squelch/soft mute. If you want to turn that off, turn it down to ’00’ with the main tuning knob, then hit the ‘9’ key again. You need to do this for AM, FM and SSB separately.
Random stuff
The S-meter was indicating a permanent base level of 2 bars even at my remote beach listening post. But even though it can apparently be “calibrated”, a 5-bar indicator is quite a step backwards from the 99-step RSSI meter of the PL-880.
After an initial discharge and recharge cycle, the 2x2000mAh “18650” batteries gave me a continuous runtime of 21 hours. When you connect the charger and then turn on the radio, it stops charging unless – and this seems odd – you are in FM mode. A full charge while listening to FM radio took 4:41.
Verdict
I had a pretty hard time making my mind up about this radio. It has so elaborate details, so much design improvement and costly parts went into it but I feel like it doesn’t quite meet the expectations Tecsun created with this radio. Sadly, it has a few things that were started ambitious and ended underwhelming.
It got a huge 2-coil loopstick and somehow they managed to make it perform slightly worse than a 70€-radio with not even half of that loopstick size, they gave it 2 external antenna ports but they disappoint MW enthusiasts right again by keeping the loopstick always active, and how FM could turn out less sensitive than many radios with the same Silicon Labs chip (including their own models) is beyond me.
They improved the front end but then they dropped the attenuator, which costs the overall flexibility and better overloading-resilience their other radios have, they fixed the SSB issues of the predecessors and introduced a free-floating BFO with a mind of its own.
The price tag is making these downers certainly weigh heavier, and I think without them this radio may have turned out to be a real classic.
On the plus side I found a radio that really excels on shortwave. Shortwave program listeners can feast on a most sensitive, selective, luxurious and well-behaved portable with a big sound and I think there’s probably no current portable that could compete with that.
Ham radio aficionados get improved SSB reception and if there wouldn’t be this “cheap 70s receiver trademark” unstable oscillator, it would come close to communications receiver performance levels (minus the frontend needed for big antenna voltages).
That the price reaches into the ballpark of pre-loved high-end(-ish) JRC/Icom/Yaesu communication receivers or buys you a mint-condition ICF-2010/2001D may seem like a problem too. But then again, none of those radios is perfect either, and only the Sony is a portable.
Despite the quirks, the S-8800 is still a great, valuable radio that revives an out-of-fashion style of radios in a pretty unique and modern way.
What a brilliant, critical review of the Tecsun S-8800! Thank you so much for taking the time to properly test and compare the S-8800 with the venerable PL-660 and the XHDATA D-808 (readers, also check out his review of the D-808).
You’re right, too, in that I’ve noticed some contradictions in reviews–I do wonder if part of this might be variations between US and EU versions of the radio, or perhaps small quirks in production runs.
No doubt, however, that the Tecsun S-8800 is a champion of the shortwave broadcast bands and its audio fidelity is in a class of its own.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Derrick Yamaura, who reached out to Eton Corporation seeking a solution to sticky radio chassises. Derrick writes:
I phoned Eton Canada’s customer support number and reached a friendly lady who immediately responded with a solution as soon as I mentioned “sticky rubber”.
She stated that Eton officially recommends a product called “Purple Power Industrial Strength Cleaner/Degreaser” because it is water-based, non-toxic, biodegradable, non-abrasive, and contains no solvents.
This reader used Purple Power to clean his benchmark Eton E1.
It’s made by Aiken Chemical and can be found at auto supply shops (e.g. Autozone, NAPA, etc.), home improvement stores, and a few major retailers (such as Walmart).
The method involves dampening a cloth or microfibre towel with the cleaner, then wiping the radio in a single direction with gentle pressure. Don’t rub back and forth or swirl in circles. It won’t remove logos, lettering, or numbers.
The agent stated that only one cleaning is necessary. The rubber coating will remain non-tacky, permanently, after using Purple Power.
Having said all that, I haven’t personally tested it. You’ll might recall that I had already cleaned my radios with oven cleaner.
Also, Purple Power is hard to find in Canada. I do have other degreasers in my workshop; some of them are even purple-coloured (e.g. Zep Commercial Purple Cleaner and Castrol SuperClean), but they’re highly corrosive and toxic, so I’m not keen on trying those on my
radios.
Therefore, if one of your other readers already has a jug of Purple Power handy, maybe they can test it out and report back to us.
My Grundig G6 desperately needs cleaning–its chassis is incredibly sticky at the moment. I also know I have some Purple Power at home, so when I return from travels I’ll put it to work on the G6!
Late last year, we learned that Sangean was planning to introduce a small portable HD radio to their product line: the Sangean HDR-14. Readers were excited about this release––indeed, I’ve received more inquiries and comments from readers about this radio than about any other HD radio.
While there have been numerous portable FM HD radios on the market over the years, there have been very few compact HD portables that can also pull AM HD signals from the ether. Shortly after Sangean made their announcement that the HDR-14 was forthcoming, I contacted them and requested a review unit. They sent me a review sample from the first production run in May.
Due to my exceptionally busy schedule this summer, it’s taken me longer than I’d like to be able to write up a complete review. On the plus side, while I’ve not had a chance to sit down and write, I have had time to listen; thus I’ve had more on-the-air time with the HDR-14, with the result that my review is built on nearly three months of use.
Initial impressions
Size comparison: Sangean HDR-14 (left) and the C. Crane CC Skywave SSB (right)
The HDR-14 has a practical AM/FM portable radio design: the front panel features a backlit display, speaker grill, power button, memory preset buttons and a few other buttons to control essential functions like tuning, HD mode/channel selection, band, and information display toggle.
Like most similar Sangean radios, the chassis is a hard gloss plastic finish, while the front panel is mostly matte. The buttons are raised and have a pleasing tactile response.
On the left side of the radio you’ll find a coaxial power port (5VDC with a positive tip), volume wheel and headphones jack. I do wish Sangean had used a standard micro USB port, but their alternate choice might be be a result of the fact that USB power supplies are so RF noisy…? This is, however, mere speculation on my part.
On the right side, the only feature is one mechanical key lock switch––a bonus for me, as I prefer mechanical key locks over push buttons.
On the back of the radio you’ll find the usual silk-screened product specifications and model information. You’ll also find the large battery compartment cover which easily slides open to reveal positions for three AA cells.
The telescopic antenna is sturdy and about twenty-five inches in length, fantastic for FM radio reception.
One unique feature of the HDR-14 is that it doesn’t have a tilt-out stand on the back, rather a foot that swings out from the bottom/base of the radio. The foot gives the HDR-14 excellent stability while standing up, say, on a night stand next to the bed. Brilliant addition, Sangean!
Features and specifications
For such a compact portable, the HDR-14 sports a compliment of features:
HD Radio digital and analog AM / FM-Stereo reception
40 Memory Presets (20 FM, 20 AM)
PAD (Program Associated Data) Service
Support for Emergency Alerts Function\
Automatic Multicast Re-Configuration
Real Time Clock and Date with Alarm and Sleep Function
2 Alarm Timer by Radio, Buzzer
HWS (Humane Wake System) Buzzer and Radio
Snooze Function
Information Display for Channel Frequency, Call Sign, Radio Text, Audio Mode, Service
Mode, Signal Quality and Clock Time
Easy-to-Read LCD Display with Backlight
Low Battery LED Indicator
I/O Jacks: DC In, Headphone and HD / FM Rod Antenna
The clock and alarm features make the HDR-14 ideal for travel. Sangean’s “Human Wake System” is one of the best wake up alarm systems I’ve ever used on a radio: the buzzer alarm sound will slowly increase in volume for 1 minute, then stop for one minute of silence, and repeat up to one hour. Of course, this will wake most of us on the first go. If not, it’s patiently persistent, but a gentle way to wake: I like this.
The internal speaker is well balanced though it lacks any notes of bass. Still, music is quite pleasing, and the spoken word sounds brilliant and clear. Note that my expectations for audio fidelity are always fairly low from radios in this size class (although the Sangean WR-7 showed me that compact radios are capable of amazing fidelity).
Operation
Tuning the radio and storing frequencies to memory are each straightforward and simple.
Keep in mind, however, that the Sangean HDR-14 can receive both AM and FM radio in analog and HD. On either band, if you tune to an analog station with accompanying HD channels that can be received, the HD Radio logo will flash on the display, indicating that the signal is blending from analog to digital. Once the radio locks onto the HD signal, the HD Radio logo on the display will cease flashing and appear steady.
Saving a station to a memory is simple: 1) tune to a frequency, use the page button to select the desired memory page of five presets; 2) press and hold the button where you would like to store the frequency, and when you hear a beep, the station has been stored. If you chose, for example, the third page and first memory position, “31” (indicating “page 3” and “memory 1,” respectively) will appear on the top line of the display. After entering your presets, you can then recall a station by selecting a page and simply pressing the preset.
The HDR-14 does have a useful “HD Seek” function that searches for HD signals automatically. In addition, there is an HD Auto Preset System that will scan the band for HD signals, then auto-store them in memory presets according to their signal strength. The first memory on the first page will be the strongest station received.
If the HDR-14 acquires an HD station that multicasts (and in my market, most do), the display will note “HD1,” “HD2,” or “HD3,” based on the number of multicast HD signals per broadcaster. You can flip through these with the tune up/down buttons once the display indicates multicast signals.
The HDR-14 also features an alpha-numeric RDS system which makes identifying the station and even their programming/music quite easy. I find that the RDS decode is quite good: it works on even marginal FM signals.
Performance
The last Sangean HD radio I reviewed was the HDR-16, and I was impressed by its performance. As you can imagine, my hope was that the HDR-14 would pack the HDR-16’s performance in a smaller package…So, did it?
Let’s just say it comes quite close.
The HDR-16’s analog AM broadcast band performance is, overall, better than that of the HDR-14. The HDR-14 isn’t poor, but its noise level is slightly higher than the HDR-16’s. I can’t say I’m disappointed with the HDR-14’s analog AM performance, however; it’s just what one would expect. I do wish it had impressed me.
I’ve only received one AM HD signal with the HDR-14, so I can’t comment on the AM HD performance other than to say I was impressed with the steady HD lock. I listened to WWFD in Germantown, MD: I could receive the station both day and even at night when power output was decreased dramatically. I find that AM HD sort of boggles the mind; it’s odd listening to a clear, static-free signal on the AM dial.
I’ve had several SWLing Post readers tell me they were impressed with the HDR-14’s ability to acquire AM HD signals. One reader added that it’s the best he’s ever used…wow! As I travel this year, I hope to snag a few more AM HD signals myself.
The HDR-14 is a very sensitive FM analog receiver. I find that I can receive all of my benchmark local and distant analog FM stations. The HDR-14 seems to be every bit as good as the HDR-16 in terms of sensitivity.
One caveat is that when I tune to an FM analog signal which happens to be adjacent to a strong FM station, sometimes the strong adjacent station bleeds into the audio. FM selectivity isn’t as good as the HDR-16.
In terms of FM HD performance, you might recall that in my review of the Sangean HDR-16, I mentioned that one of my benchmark distant HD FM stations is WFAE HD2. WFAE’s transmitter is just over one hundred miles from my home shack, and I’m well outside even the the fringe reception area. I’m pleased to note that, on more than one occasion, from my porch, I’ve gotten a reliable HD lock on WFAE with the HDR-14. I’m convinced that when the leaves fall off the trees this fall (they do attenuate signals) reception will be fairly near to reliable.
Listening to the HDR-14 from a hospital room.
While waiting for a block of time to pen this review, I’ve spent a lot of time tuning to FM HD signals in a least five different urban and regional markets in two countries. And I can say I’m very impressed with reception; the HDR-14 seems to snag every available HD signal.
Summary
Every radio has its pros and cons. When I begin a review of a radio, I take notes from the very beginning so that I don’t forget some of my initial impressions. Here is the list I formed over the time I’ve spent evaluating the HDR-14.
Pros:
Excellent overall FM Analog and HD performance
Excellent AM HD reception (a stand-out for pocket sized HD receivers)
40 memory presets
Built-in speaker has first-rate fidelity for spoken word and music (see con)
Uses standard AA cells
Excellent build quality
Gentle but persistent alarm
Useful swing out stand for bedside listening and alarm usage
Compact form factor, ideal for travel
Cons:
AM analog performance is acceptable but not for weak-signal work
FM Analog selectivity is mediocre, some strong adjacent station bleed-through
Built-in speaker lacks bass response, so not optimal for all music listening (see pro)
Conclusion
While I have mixed feelings about digital radio in general––but especially In-band on-channel (IBOC) HD radio––I do love exploring all that over-the-air radio has to offer. Like it or not, HD radio is a part of that landscape for the foreseeable future.
HD Radio has opened up a few alternative music stations that otherwise I’d never have discovered in my local market. In addition, I find that NPR and public radio stations often multicast commercial-free talk, jazz, and classical music, which makes HD Radio a worthy addition at home and while I travel. In large urban markets, HD Radio certainly increases the number of available commercial options sometimes by a factor of two or possibly more.
If you like chasing AM and FM HD signals, you’ll be very pleased with the HDR-14. It’s first rate, and I recommend it.
The Sangean HDR-14 RDS display (Photo: Thomas)
I’ll close by adding that I continue to be impressed with Sangean as a company. They’ve always been one of the quality leaders in the portable radio marketplace, and still make products with the radio enthusiast in mind––something of a rarity these days. I always look forward to seeing what they’ll come up with next!
The Sangean HDR-14 can be purchased at a number of retailers including:
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, who shares the following recordings and writes:
With the news over the past few years, and especially over the last few weeks, of the rapid decline of Venezuela, it’s interesting to recall that there was a day when that country was a powerhouse on the shortwave band, with numerous private radio stations that SWL’s around the world could hear in the 90, 60, 49, 31, and 19 meter bands.
There was also a brief attempt to put Venezuela on the map as an international broadcaster, with Radio Nacional de Venezuela which was audible at good signal levels.
Our thanks to Dan for this 45 minute recording, found in Dan’s archives of recordings, from 2004 when Radio Nacional de Venezuela was on the air in October 2004:
Dan, thank you so much for sharing these excellent off-air recordings! I will also add these to the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive. We look forward to any other recordings you might turn up in your archives.
I still receive a surprising amount of questions about mobile (car/in-dash) shortwave receivers. We have a dedicated category to all things mobile shortwave but it is certainly a radio category with comparatively few options.
