For me, the unique combination of size, sensitivity and selectivity is making up for the shortcomings, it certainly remains a very interesting radio and I can’t remember carrying one around that much, ever. All these radios can overload easily at night with external antenna and so the local/DX button helps a lot, unfortunately the D-808 overload with external antenna can be quite a lot with no form of attenuation. On the other hand it has great frequency stability, great selectivity and sensitivity and I can hear what I want to hear anyway. Crane Skywave is still available, although even it is still manufactured in Shenzhen, China—the nerve center of such copying.

Ultralight Radio DXing has inspired spinoff fascination not only with portable antennas like the new Ferrite Sleeve Loops (FSL’s) but also with overseas travel DXing, enhanced transoceanic propagation at challenging sites like ocean side cliffs and Alaskan snowfields, as well as at isolated islands far out into the ocean. 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.These perform very well, and as with the other DSP-enhanced portables, the narrowest bandwidth (1K) provides the most sensitive AM band reception. But please note that we will never create a post and product link explicitly to receive a commission. I initially considered this radio and its evil Digitech twin from Australia, but the subsequent reviews leave me less than enthused.

This audio stage noise is more audible thru the speaker than on earphones, what seems to make no sense. This can provide a real-time check of propagation changes during time-limited propagation openings for live ocean beach DXing with Ultralight radios or other portables (or with the D-808 itself, if desired). 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. The signal meter indicates that it gains some sensitivity only above 300kHz, but from there it quickly starts to beat the PL-660 – during the day I can hear all of the local NDBs, something I can’t say about the PL-660.I am currently located in the Northeast of Portugal, at an altitude of about 1000 meters, and I can receive radio transmission signals from the various passenger planes that fly over the area, using the telescopic antenna and being indoors at the window.

The first one I bought has a hight pitched ringing sound that makes listening for just a few minutes pretty painful. The original XHDATA D-808 released back in 2018, in grey color cabinet and display with white color backlight. Also, the antenna mounting seems to be fragile, requiring great care when rotating it, as it can break the plastic support.Like the PL-880 (at least some of them), the D-808’s AGC has a way too slow attack rate, the first portion of any strong SSB/CW signal is distorted before the AGC levels back, and it increases gain fast enough that even short talking (or keying) pauses make the next syllable distorted again. Set it level 1 and it will not mute the audio due to the noise floor inside house (around 12dBu), but at level 2 it would mute it; then the radio is able to unmute the audio for signals as low as 25dBu.