By Jock Elliott, KB2GOM

My friend Andy, who is an expert medium wave DXer, calls it his “weapon of choice” and a “DX machine.” In fact, just a night ago, using a YouLoop passive antenna hanging from a birdfeeder on his porch in upstate New York, he snagged a couple of tiny Mexican stations above 1600 kHz at a distance of over 2000 miles. He was surprised the stations were there, and it was a bit of a hunt on the internet to find their livestreams and ID them.

The radio that made hearing these diminutive stations possible is the Deepelec DP-666, a radio based on the high-sensitivity, high-selectivity TEF6686 chip which is used in automotive radios. The DP-666 measures 5 inches wide (excluding knobs) by 3 1/8 inches high by 1 1/8 inch deep. On the front panel are a speaker grill, a 2.8-inch color display, and 15 buttons for various radio functions (including a full numeric keypad for direct frequency entry) and a red power button. On the right side are tuning and volume knobs. On the bottom panel is a master switch for power. On the left panel are a 1/8-inch headphone socket and a USB-C port for a communication interface and for charging the 5000 mAh rechargeable battery, which is not user-accessible.

The DP-666 can receive FM (from 65-108 MHz with various frequency ranges selectable for different parts of the world and over a dozen different bandwidths), SW (from 1700-27000 kHz), MW (522-1791 kHz, 9 kHz steps; 520-1720 kHz, 10 kHz steps) and LW 144-513 kHz. In AM mode, 3/4/6/8 kHz bandwidths are available. The DP-666 does not offer single-sideband reception.

You won’t hear anything, however, unless you connect an antenna to the standard SMA female connector on the top panel of the radio, because the DP-666 has no internal antenna. The DP-666 comes with a 29 ½ inch whip antenna that does a yeoman job of receiving MW and FM. For MW DXing, Andy prefers the passive YouLoop, and he uses the DP-666/YouLoop combo frequently. “It’s quiet,” he says.

For MW reception, I like a direct cable connection between the DP-666 and a Terk AM Advantage, which is an un-amplified loop antenna with capacitive tuning. I can hold the Terk antenna in my left hand (which allows me to rotate it from side to side and even tilt it for improved reception), and with my thumb, I can rotate the antenna’s tuning wheel for peak reception. At the same time, I hold the DP-666 in my right hand and operate the tuning knob with my thumb and forefinger. It looks a little weird, but works really well.

For FM reception, I use a scanner antenna, a Comet W100RX extended to about 31 inches. The DP-666 display offers a full complement of RDS information if transmitted by the FM station. I am not, by any means, an expert FM DXer, but it seems to be a “hot” receiver.

For SW reception, the DP-666 also works pretty well with the whip antenna that comes with it. When connected to my 50-foot indoor horizontal room loop antenna, it detected a lot of shortwave stations on auto-scan. My guess is that dedicated shortwave DXers will be pleased with this pocket-sized radio.

In addition to its excellent electrical performance on MW, SW, and FM (I did not test LW), there are a couple of things about the DP-666 that I really love. The first is that, straight out of the box, the DP-666 is easy to use without consulting the manual. However, if you want tons, and tons, and TONS of customizability, press and hold the MODE button to access the MENU screens, where you can “fiddle the bits” to your heart’s delight. I have never used any of these settings, but they are there if you want them. (I think I consulted the manual just once to learn how to store stations in memory.) The well-written manual can be downloaded in PDF format here: https://deepelec.com/files/dp-666/DP-666_Product_Manual_EN.pdf .

The second thing that delights me about the DP-666 is that it is a quiet radio to operate. The clicks from the buttons are soft, and the tuning knob has detents that are felt, not heard. With headphones on, I can seek distant stations without disturbing others in the room.

Bottom line, the Deepelec DP-666 is a sensitive and easy to use radio that delivers pleasing results on MW, SW, and FM. I would be delighted to hear from others who have used it, particularly with high-performance antennas.

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Don Moore–noted author, traveler, and DXer–who shares the following post:

Two Portable Antennas for Remote DXing (Part Two)

By Don Moore

Don’s traveling DX stories can be found in his book Tales of a Vagabond DXer [SWLing Post affiliate link]. If you’ve already read his book and enjoyed it, do Don a favor and leave a review on Amazon.

In my initial comparison of the PA0RDT mini-whip and the MLA-30+ MegaLoop, the mini-whip performed best on medium wave and the lower shortwave bands, while the loop worked better on the higher bands. But, I wondered, why should the MLA-30+ be restricted to that small steel loop? The wire loops I use with my Wellbrook ALA-100LN typically range from twenty to fifty meters in circumference.

I threw a twenty-five-meter wire over a tree branch and formed it into a delta with the MLA-30+ in the bottom center. Remember, I was testing in the northern Chicago suburbs. My SDRs were completely overloaded. Medium wave was useless and I had strong MW stations all over the shortwave bands. The MLA-30+ doesn’t have the same strong-signal handling capabilities as the Wellbrook. And there are a lot of strong medium wave signals in the Chicago suburbs.

So I took that wire down and replaced it with a loop of twelve meters circumference.

That did the trick. I had lots of signals on medium wave without the overloading. Here’s what the upper end of the MW band now looked like with the MLA-30+.

For comparison, here’s the same wire loop using the Wellbrook ALA-100LN. The Wellbrook has a slightly lower noise floor but otherwise the signals are about the same.

Out of curiosity, I replaced the Wellbrook power unit with the Bias-T from the MLA-30+ but left the Wellbrook antenna head unit in place. With this hybrid setup there’s no visible difference with the full Wellbrook.

I was satisfied with my findings but I still wondered how much wire the MLA-30+ could handle. A few weeks later I ran some more tests in Kansas, where I knew the dial wouldn’t be as crowded. The MLA-30+ easily handled a 25-meter delta loop without overloading.

Two weeks after doing the Kansas tests I was at a DXpedition in rural western Pennsylvania. The MLA-30+ worked fine with a 40-meter circumference loop, other than being a tad noisier than the Wellbrook with the same wire. So how much wire you can use with the MLA-30+ components depends on how strong your local medium wave stations are.

Findings

From the SDR images above it would be easy to conclude that with the right length of wire an MLA-30+ is just as good as a Wellbrook ALA-100LN even though it is significantly cheaper. But that’s not the full picture. Back in the 1990s my Drake R-8 cost about three times what my Sony ICF-2010 did. All other things being equal, I would say that 95% of the DX heard on the Drake could have been heard equally well on the Sony. I wanted the Drake for the other five percent.

I have no doubt that if I did a very careful head-to-head comparison of the two units under serious DX conditions on the same wire that the Wellbrook would get things the MLA-30+ couldn’t. But I suspect the difference would be around that five percent mark. I’m willing to accept that tradeoff for an effective cheap light-weight travel antenna. And the MLA-30+ is like having two antennas in one. I can use it with the steel loop in limited space situations or with a larger wire loop when I have access to some garden space with a tree. Together, the MLA-30+ and the PA0RDT make the perfect DX travel antennas.

The only thing I didn’t like about the MLA-30+ was that pre-attached coax cable. It’s not the best quality and I’d rather carry my own cable. I’m not very handy with a soldering iron in tight spaces but at our recent DXpedition my friend Bill Nollman replaced the coax with a BNC jack for me.

The MLA-30+ now looks like this when connected to a wire loop.

Finally, I should address powering the MLA-30+ via USB. While it can be connected to a spare USB port on your laptop, I found doing that sometimes introduced a tad more noise. Instead I’ve been using one of those battery packs used for recharging cellphones. Mine is rated at 6700 mAh and it can power the MLA-30+ for over 48 hours before needing a recharge. But be sure to test yours before doing any serious DXing. I’ve read that some power packs have a minimum required power draw and will automatically shut off if the draw is too low.

Another Option?

While I was finishing this article I heard about another option from my friend Guy Atkins. This antenna is a combination of the YouLoop with a low-priced Chinese made clone of the LZ1AQ amplifier. Some users say it’s better than the MLA-30+. Guy says it works well on shortwave up to 16 meters but he hasn’t tried it on medium wave. Guy says it’s a “low price, good value” antenna. I’m traveling in Southeast Asia for the winter but will definitely have to try this antenna when I get back to the USA. So maybe there will be a follow-up article next summer.