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. This is making an old dream come true for me – a full-featured “communication receiver” (well, almost) that’s “wearable”, one that allows me to enjoy hands-free and hassle-free full shortwave reception on all bands without compromises (particularly in sensitivity) when I do the boring walks the doctor prescribed!

The PL-880 is decent on LW, Good on MW and very good on SW, it’s a joy to use. Audio is ok. I find the Audio on the PL-880 better to my ears in general. The Antenna input on the S-8800 also works on LW/MW but does not disconnect the internal ferrite but once you’re aware of it it greatly improves lw/mw/sw with my Bonito MA205 Whip. The sound is not so good. Music sounds "thin" but that's probably the contribute I have to pay for the size of the speaker. Volume control is "analog", which is a big advantage over many of those controls working with digitized steps. The fixation of the telescope antenna is a bit fragile. Rotate it carefully, it's held with just one small screw ending in a piece of plastic. Refer to the close up photo above. Following the precautions described, solder the two Litz wire leads down onto the circuit board at an angle, as shown in the photo. After soldering, make a close visual inspection to ensure that there are no solder bridges across the Litz wire connections, or nearby components. The remaining length of the Litz wire leads should be routed in a horizontal manner to the wrist strap hole.For anyone interested making a LW induction antenna as shown above, here is a link to a video that has basic instructions & further results. It may be a very simple build & finish what I did, but for me the most important thing is that it works. I improved my D-808 receiver. I removed the magnetic antenna and made the input external on long and medium waves. On all bands the telescopic antenna works perfectly. https://cloud.mail.ru/public/8MpN/5KEdTSpDo On the other hand, tuning through the bands is a pain. Every tuning step mutes the receiver for some tenth of a second. This is nothing I want to see in a radio of the 21st century. Pressing a button gives a "brrp" sound in the speaker. Not very nice. The manual says the radio has ATS, but says nothing about what ATS is, or how it works. The manual talks about SSB, USB and LSB, but never says what those letters stand for, nor does it explain how to tune SSB. “In SSB mode, rotate the fine tuning knob to adjust the level of fine tuning” doesn’t tell the user anything useful.

Radiwow claims the performance is better than that of the venerable Tecsun PL-310ET. This, I will have to test because the PL-310ET is certainly a workhorse Ultralight radio. And the R-108 includes air band? Sounds like a CC Skywave without weather radio. That could be quite appealing if the price is competitive.Various station search methods, Automatic Search (ATS); Manually search the radio frequency (VF); Direct input frequency figures, etc. Excellent receiver and technically well designed. There is a similar receiver in the market (Digitech AR1780) but it have a issue with the battery consumption when the radio is off as it draws around 3mA and it depletes the batteries in a few weeks if the radio is powered off. XHDATA D-808 doesn't exhibits the same issue as it only draws 90uA , very similarly as other legendary receivers as the Grundig G6. Although the number of LW broadcast stations is dwindling, there are plenty of NDBs to catch – as well as hams on the new 630 meter band. You don’t find that kind of selectivity capability even in a Drake R8B. After that, you’re getting into continuously variable bandwidth control found in premium DSP receivers. The XHDATA D-808 bandwidth filters seem to have excellent characteristics – AM/SW selectivity seems very good while maintaining good high frequency response at all but the very narrowest settings which allow great selectivity and sensitivity for signals at the threshold of audibility. FM selectivity is excellent and on par with the best of today’s DSP FM portables.

I suppose one could take the battery out when the radio is not in use, but I have never had this problem with any other radio.So particularly on LSB, the offset on my D-808 varies quite a bit over the entire coverage range but I think this is within the allowable tolerance for such a radio. The PL-660 has slightly better results but it also has a center-indented fine-tuning knob making small corrections quite difficult. In AM mode they are both spot on.