Testing a friend's PL880

The previous days I had a discussion with a friend in a nearby place in the village and gave it to me for making a review . He bought it recently and used it for a short time but had no problem to give it to me for a some further testing for publication to return it after a short time .

The box was with full material: the radio inside a leather box , the earphones a wound antenna and a cable to be connected for a supposedly ubiquitous as it is called (?)USB charger . Also there was the documentation a big paper of ca 80x60 cm with all specs in a blitz with the rear side showing the codes of the world in a big map,seebelow for more

In this picture there are all documentation including the sheet with the special adjustments from the keypad

The is included a very largre shhet with all operations of the radio in the one side , with the amateur radio map that includes also codes ertc

The radio has a very nice though quite narrow designed leather box for transferring

The radio has a nice design nearly same dimensions with oterh PL radios but quite heavier . Its weight is 555 grams measured with a kitchen scale

A close up of the panl at right . there is a tuning knob at the right , a fine tuning in middle and the volume control .ALso a tone switch an a light switch

on the left side there are a USB charging socket , line out , Headphones , attenuator and antenna in.

here the presentation ends and yo can read more about it in otehr sites as the purpopse of this page is to provide some important i hope personal observations and comparisons to other radio i use mainly comparative test with 1103 and 380

What I liked with this radio, it has a 'analogue' volume control that behaves differently than the 380 and is close to 360

I didnt like that the antenna used has quite thin elements that once fully unfolded , the last withch is less than 1 mm think can easily break

AM Filters & tuning : there is a series of filters of 2.3 /3.5 / 5 and 9 kHz which are close to the PL380 of 1 /2 3 and 6 kHz respectively in terms if audio fidelity

• • Bandwidths can be changed in htse 3 ways :

    • Using the b/w switch The filters are changed in a up and down style ie start from low to hi then high to low and vice versa !

    • Using the freq switch

    • Using the fine tune switch

  • Fine tuning is to 1 kHz

  • Notice that changing the freq in either tuning knob there is some 0.1-0.3 sec latency (blank audio )

SSB:

• • In SSB the filters use nearly the half of the bandwidth e 0.5 /1,2 /2.3/3.0/4 kHz

  • The manner to change the bandwidths ar the same with AM

  • Fine tuning is to 0.01 kHz

  • Here is a ‘but’ in the situation : the filters of 3 and 4 kHz don’t have any significant difference in audio fidelity and are close if not lower to 2 kHz !!

  • Though not easily recognized there is a shift from the exact freq by 130 HZ in both sidebands . ECSS (fine tuning) to an Am signal )seems to operate properly .There is a technique to adjust it via the table provided n he separate sheet

SYNCHRO :

• • Synch is a special feature thought not operating properly in cases that the signals have strong fading and a buzzer is quite apparent but locks quite well to the signal (even with more than 200 Hz there is no shift to audio )

  • Once I tested the synchro feature in a SSB signal : ther result was a totally garbled sound

  • I prefer to use the ECSS technique (using the SSB totune ). It works much better for listening to signals more stable

FM reception and usage :

• • The FM tune knob has a 0.1 MHZ step and the fine tune knob uses 10 kHz

  • The BW filter is the standard of all Silicon based radios , I think it is ca 200 kHz

  • The audio is pretty good but is a little less than the 380’s fidelity if using earphones

  • Reception is ca the same with PL380 . But there is a very nice advantage :the audio level of the very poor signals is the same with the strong signals , in contrast to the PL3x0 series

  • Attenuator operates also in this band

  • This is the only Filter. I could prefer to see a narrower filter !

  • Earphone cable can affect reception . IN several cases also the hand over the radio can enhance reception of low signals . But detaching the antenna to its ful length can restore to better reception

MW reception and usage :

• • Slightly better sensitivity over PL380 : tested in various frequencies (1503 810 and 567 )

  • There are no problems with self images as in PL380 that occur in several important Greek freqs as 1404 or 729 but still there are some carriers in other frequencies

  • Attenuator operates in this bands too

  • Synch also works in this band

LW

• • IN contrast to PL600 ,and PL380 the 880 excels in reception on nights with clear signals even if the band is attenuated for more than 20 db in between 160-200. One of the nicest operations of this radio

  • Attenuator does affect the band a bit but not so much as in other bands

  • Seen a fall of sensitivity in the range of 160-200 kHz. Just a few kHz and the radio's sensitivity restores

Shortwaves :

• • NO overloads even using the 16 H antenna connected to the radio of the antenna on local nights

  • Operates properly with the mag loop via the 3.9mm antenna plug

  • Once you change a band the last freqs remain of the band

  • I found several carriers

Speaker : The 880 is bassier than the 380 (380 is heard very sharp comparing to 380 , as the DE17 is heard comparing to PL380)

Earphone : The earphone included tested with mine's AKG 909 loses trebles and has little more bass . Didn't made any parallel listening for it btu just changed earphones during listening the same song

Result and verdict : 3.5-4 /5

The reasons (downs):

• • could prefer the filters to be exact (unless the filters on the 380 ar more wide than the displayed!!)

  • the SSB modes have correct filtering eg 4kHz to operate as 4khz (and better audio correspondingly)

  • a second narrower FM filter could be a nice addition esp fr the FM DXers

  • as for the synch is quite known problem also mentioned in the yahoo group quite much (?)

  • the high internal noise herd in all the bands (possibly problem from the internal analog circuitry this happens also to the MW reception of the PL380 )

The ups of this radio:

• • No SW overloads even the radio's antenna is connected to the external antenna

  • Nice FM audio normalization on all stations from the soft tune (something the very cheap De 17 has also for the SW)

  • Good LW reception better comparing to the vacancy of PL 600 and 380

If you are member of the yahoo group https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Tecsun_PL-880 you can search some interesting material on the files including spectrum analysis for SSB and ECSS reception . I will not include any photos here It also includes the sheet with the hidden operations

BTW the hidden features are as follows:

• • Adjustable FM De-emphasis (no audio difference )

  • Adjustable Line-Out Level

  • Adjusting Muting Threshold

  • Battery low voltage shutdown

  • Digital Noise Reduction

  • Force Receiver to accept LW/MW antennas into the external SW antenna jack (a complex 7-step process)

  • MW and SSB Calibration

  • Radio Run time

  • Seconds on/off for clock