On Mar 4, 9:42*pm, "Brenda Ann"
wrote:
I picked up one of these little radios just because it was cheap and I was
curious as to it's true functionality. Preliminary tests showed amazing
results.

First thing out of the box, I put in the batteries (comes with three AA
NiMHs) and hit the power button. *It was set to FM (US band, it also has the
Russian 64-108, the "short" Japanese band 76-90 and the "long" Japanese band
76-108 (which includes their bottom tier of TV channels).

This is the first (portable) radio I've had that gets ZERO crosstalk between
FM stations just 200 KHz apart. This includes the local AFN outlet on 88.3
(at the time it's huge 40 watts was about 5 blocks away as the crow flies)
and the Osan AFN outlet on 88.5, about 15 miles away. This feature is handy,
since there are no two stations here more than 400 KHz apart, with 95% of
them being just 200 KHz apart. It's a very crowded band (gets really crazy
when the tropo is in and the Chinese FM's take over..) *As the radio has
dual speakers and a stereo amp. the FM stereo is quite good and you don't
HAVE to have headphones, but of course some are supplied.

Moving on to the MW band, I find the sensitivity to be way above par for a
small portable. The DSP does a very admirable job here. When using the auto
tuning feature, the radio found some 40 stations, some which were pretty far
down in the mud. The radio has a digital readout signal meter with both
strength in dBu and S/N in dB. The AGC hits a wall at 63dBu on the MW, LW
and SW bands.

The SW reception is excellent, but is limited on this radio to AM only, and
the band runs only from 2300-21950 KHz. This is still useful for most
program and utes listening. In addition, it has a bandwidth selector which
operates on all the AM bands, with 6, 4, 3, 2 and 1 KHz bandwidths. Somehow
it maintains a pleasant audio even at the low bandwidths, which most
definitely work, as I can go to a fairly high level station, go to the 1 KHz
position, tune 2 KHz off channel and have virtually nothing. Works out very
well for the extremely crowded Asian SW bands, where stations every 5 KHz
are not uncommon.

One interesting thing about the radio is that, in addition to the usual
12/24 hour clock display, it also has a thermometer, which reads out in
Celsius when the AM is in 9 KHz mode and Fahrenheit when in the 10 KHz mode.

In a couple weeks, with any luck at all, I'll be getting a Tecsun PL-660.
This one will have SSB, sync, Aircraft band, and a bunch of other bells and
whistles. I'll do a short review of that one as well.

BAD,

What about the Built-in Rechargeable Battery function
via USB Jack (5V) for the 3 "AA" Batteries {4.5V} ?

iwtk ~ RHF