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The silabs chips can do SSB demodulation, but they seem to have contracts in place as they seem to exclusively supply those to tecsun and other portable radio manufacturers, but not the general public. As this was not an exhaustive retro review of the D-808, I have not gone into the various negatives that every D-808 owner knows to exist.
I owned many portable radios over the years and still I like to try out some new ones. I played around with this radio for many months now and found my personal interpretation for the advantages and disadvantages.Nevertheless, combined with SIX bandwidth options when in SSB, the fine tuning option on the 808 is a superb feature, not to mention that on my particular D-808 there is little to no “warbling” when carrying out the fine tune operation.
I use RDS CT to synchronize the time, yet my time is always and constantly -3 hours off. I use only strong stations, different stations, already reset the radio. If you connect the receiver to a large external antenna, you will encounter many IMD signals. As there is no built-in attenuator, you will need an external one. To “a newer and faster DSP chip to speed up mode changes”: The D-808 is a Si4734/Si4735/Si4732 chip receiver. Other radios of this type are the very cheap chinese ATS-20 and ATS-25 or the well known brands radios Tecsun PL-310ET, PL-365, PL-360, PL-380, PL-880, Degen DE1103 DSP, DE1123, DE1126, Sangean ATS-909X, C Crane CC Skywave and Radiwow R-108. The PL-660 is poor on LW and Deaf on MW great on SW and has great Sync Detection I wish other radios had, the wider filters can be an issue with SW DX’ing but changing to LSB/USB can make all the difference. In FM mode the stereo separation was very successful, I was able to get quite full and satisfying listening. In other bands, the speaker on the D-808 seems to deliver a more frequency-oriented sound. I guess this happens because the speaker on the D-808 cuts out some the frequencies.Sangean made some basic decisions with the 909×2. Many of them are quite positive over the old 909x. For many users the 909×2 has more than enough features to justify the higher price of the receiver. Searching round, there have been quite a few reports of this fault on the web and it looks like its a design flaw. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be the support in place to get the radio fixed so when it goes wrong, it is cheaper to post it direct to the nearest landfill. Other than that, it seems to abide <10m/30ft of wire just fine and it gets along with my ML-200 active loop, currently indoors with a rigid 80cm aluminum loop, unless the RRI transmitters populate 49 and/or 41m after midnight. That station occasionally hits the 9+60 mark on my SDR with a dipole and when they’re on, the D-808 has to be tuned far away from these bands or disconnected from the loop to stop the pumping, desensitizing and intermodulation products. Interestingly, strong signals often make the filter drop out (as described under “SSB reception”) as well. A theory could be that this happens when an off-band signal (and/or the AGC causing “clipping”) makes an AD-converter run out of bits.
i wouldn’t call this an “unexpected chip” .. if i was looking for an FM transceiver i would look for a chip like this I do wonder if Tecsun have improved the PL-660 over the years. More than likely as most manufacturers make undocumented improvements over the years. The build quality is also very impressive, the buttons are as rattle free as they are on the D-808.
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Below are four videos showing the D-808’s reception of three weaker daytime medium wave stations from indoors at my suburban Seattle-Tacoma (WA) home, plus one video of a shortwave reception in the 41 meter band. The XHDATA D-808 is compared to C. Crane’s newest Skywave radio, the SSB model, and the Eton Executive Satellit. Although brief, these tests show how the new XHDATA portable is a welcome competitor to the field of modern, compact SSB-capable radios: The D-808 is at least as sensitive as my Alinco DJ-X11 scanner and skunks the rather deaf Tecsun in this band. Unlike the PL-660 and most other small receivers covering that band it has a squelch, which is by the way active on all bands.
Perhaps it is worth writing an article about the currently manufactured portable global receivers, as it was in this article. The SI go in the other direction, certainly useful for shortwave, but can they be programmed for various modes, or are they “hardwired” for specific modes. I get the feeling modes and selectivity are adjustable, but from between some preprogrammed modes. So even if you attach your own controller to a Grundig G8 portable’s SI IC, you can get more bandwidths but no SSB. Na dlouhé anténě (cca 25 metrů) se XH DATA během dne chová dobře. Vnočních hodinách má sklony se zahltit, což není nic překvapivého.When I really get to dreaming, I think of XHDATA or some other maker designing a portable like the 808 – why not call it the 1000 Super DSP – that actually has continuously adjustable bandwidth control. This will never happen. Pod displejem se tradičně nachází klávesnice. Má velmi malý zdvih, avšak je spolehlivá. Pokud jste zvyklí na poslech v posteli, kdy vedle dřímá drahá polovička, jemné cvakání kláves ji rozhodně rušit nebude. I’ve read a similar comment in one of the other posts about the D-808, so it’s possible that a few units come with this issue. Are you using the proper unprotected 18650s with pin? Another thing to rule out as a potential culprit would be the charger, but I guess the 808 shouldn’t indicate a fully charged battery then. I hope you have no trouble getting the 808 replaced! Both receivers are generally very stable and don’t exhibit a noticeable warm-up drift. Just to see what happens, I took the D-808 from a very warm apartment into cold (-5°C/28F) and stormy weather outside. The internal (and very slow changing) thermometer of the D-808 indicated an internal temperature drop of 12°C within 10 minutes and if there was a drift at all, it drifted less than 10Hz.
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