{"id":30316,"date":"2018-01-16T16:45:34","date_gmt":"2018-01-16T20:45:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/?p=30316"},"modified":"2018-01-16T17:11:15","modified_gmt":"2018-01-16T21:11:15","slug":"xhdata-d-808-a-shortwave-comparison-against-four-other-portables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/xhdata-d-808-a-shortwave-comparison-against-four-other-portables\/","title":{"rendered":"XHDATA D-808: A Shortwave Comparison Against Four Other Portables"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the clouds part and the sun shines during the winter<\/a><\/strong> in the Seattle, Washington area, it’s time for a celebration! I decided to take advantage of the mild weather and compare the XDATA D-808<\/strong> (a real upstart in the marketplace, and a value leader in portables) against a few other radios on a nice daytime signal from Radio New Zealand International, 15720 kHz.<\/p>\n

Besides the D-808<\/strong>, receivers compared to each other were: the C. Crane Skywave SSB <\/strong>(complete with stray cat’s whisker on the LCD :^)\u00a0, the Eton Executive Satellit, the Grundig G3,<\/strong> and a beautiful example of the rare Sony ICF-SW1000T<\/strong> (sometimes called the Sony Shortwave Walkman due to the built-in cassette recorder). My apologies for the lower audio setting on the G3.<\/p>\n

The antenna used with each radio was a PK Loops “Ham Loop” antenna<\/a><\/strong>, which is advertised as covering 3.5 – 14.5 MHz, but my loop actually tunes approximately 3.2 MHz to 15.8 MHz. I also briefly received RNZI on each radio’s own whip antenna.<\/p>\n

I used the 3.0 kHz bandwidth on all the SiLabs DSP radios, and the narrow filter on the G3. The ICF-SW1000T has a single filter, so it cannot be adjusted.<\/p>\n