[Lowfer] Hand Held LW / HF Receiver For When Your Out And About 031817

[WD8ARZ]

Dont want to be away from monitoring Long Wave? Then check
out the Tecsun PL-660 hand held AA battery operated radio.


The larger main analog tuning knob tunes ssb in 1kHz steps. But
there is a bfo knob that is analog fine tuning that makes it easy to
adjust for SSB sync, like a ham rig. Also can  step between lsb, usb.
There is even a 'sync' selection that basically gives you just the upper
or lower sideband portion of an A.M. signal. It actually works well
when you get audio distortion on a fading in and out A.M. signal in
normal a.m. mode, use sync and select the side band that is clearer
depending on what strong signals are near by.

Tune knob has setting options too. I prefer the option that lets me
tune across a band in fast mode if I speed up my rotation of the
main tuning knob. If I slow down my tuning, it goes to the small
frequency tuning rate. Very convenient.

Am guessing the slower tuning is 10Hz steps, but it could be less.
Thus it is like typical ham receivers. I intentionally avoided
receivers that tuned in kHz steps only.

The tuning system has options for tuning in steps if you want to. A
button in the upper right corner near the display read out can step
the tuning rate increments. For example you could tune across the
A.M. broadcast band in 10kHz steps if you wanted to.

Here is a link that will show you how to do an alignment and it
includes setting sideband.
http://rholm.tumblr.com/post/63643179578/tecsun-pl-660-ssb-bfo-alignment-alternate-title

By the way, you have options on using rechargeable, or none
rechargeable AA batteries with this radio. Not trusting any radio to
handle the recharging of its batteries to maximize battery life, I
always do the battery re-charging out side of the radio using the
designated charger from the manufacture. Be it nicad or Ni-MH.
I have four sets of rechargeable batteries for this radio in my grab
and go kit. Of course have long life standard alkaline AA batteries
too as a back up if no recharging is available for a long period of
time.

Note that older versions of this radio have an option to select a
time interval when no buttons or tuning knob has been touched
for auto power off of the radio. In the newer version of the radio
the off setting is a timer with out regard to touching buttons or
tuning or not.

Also note that the newer version of this radio has a hotter long
wave band using its built in antenna. Instructions are poor for
getting into the long wave band that tunes 100 - 519kHz. Just
press the A.M. mode button a second time while in standard
broadcast band 520-1710kHz, then you can tune long wave.

Am considering getting a second PL-660 for my emergency grab
and go kit.

73 from Bill WD8ARZ a long time shortwave listener.