{"id":22753,"date":"2016-12-08T17:24:45","date_gmt":"2016-12-08T21:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/?p=22753"},"modified":"2016-12-08T17:24:45","modified_gmt":"2016-12-08T21:24:45","slug":"tecsun-pl-680-just-how-sensitive-is-this-radio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/tecsun-pl-680-just-how-sensitive-is-this-radio\/","title":{"rendered":"Tecsun PL-680: Just How Sensitive is This Radio?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>More than\u00a0two months ago, in the Mount Evelyn DX Report<\/a> I\u00a0posted a review of the Tecsun PL-680 portable receiver, entitled Tecsun PL-680 Beats Expectations<\/a>. In that article, I pointed out many of the positives and a few of the flaws surrounding the unit. At the end of the review, I promised I would do some sensitivity tests on the radio.<\/p>\n

Well, I finally got around to completing the tests, and the results are in. Below is a YouTube video showing a practical demonstration of the receiver’s capabilities in this area of performance.<\/p>\n

The portable Tecsun PL-680 receiver is a hot little radio! As these tests show, it appears to be very sensitive to weak signals. Here, we put the little 680 up against one the best HF transceivers on the market today – the Yaesu FTDX3000 transceiver. The receiver in the 3000 is quite brilliant! And it has all the “bells-and-whistles” to make it even better at digging out weak signals and reducing adjacent channel interference.<\/p>\n

However,\u00a0in these tests we turn off all the fancy facilities on the FTDX3000 and just run the two receivers side by side to see how the 680 compares. We use the same antenna and we plug both radios into the same external speaker, adjusting as close as we can to equal volume and tone quality. We select a variety of shortwave broadcast stations over a range of frequencies from the 60 through to the 16 meter bands. I think you’ll discover\u00a0that the Tecsun is really a very good performer when it comes to sensitivity!<\/p>\n