Tecsun PL-660 - Out of the Penalty Box

I was not impressed with the PL-660 when I received it and it was banished to a slot in my desk not to be touched. I spend most of my time using either my PL-880 or PL-380 for Shortwave and my C Crane 2E Enhanced for Medium Wave. I finally decided to have another go with the 660 and figured out how to make the radio work for me. First I must say that I do not have a newer version of firmware. I can't even check to see what version I have and am unable to fix the 5kHz offset when using the wide filter when listening to Shortwave. Here are a couple things I do that have helped me make the radio more usable.

• I stay in narrow mode unless there is something I am listening to where I want the best sound quality possible.
• When I go to the wide mode I just have to tune lower
• When using ATS I set the antenna gain to normal
• The 660 locks on to too many frequencies that are just noise
• When set to local I see a 10% to 20% decrease in detect stations but what is stored is normally a station that's not buried in noise

There are a couple of features with the 660 that are not available in any of my other radios that I really enjoy. First the 660 will scan the whole spectrum, not just the SW bands. I came across a Marine Weather Station because of this. Secondly the 660 has very good sync detect. The only other radio I have with this feature is the Sony ICF-SW7600GR but the whip antenna seems to be disconnected internally and the radio has never been very user friendly. I also prefer tuning ham bands a lot more on this radio.

Revisiting this radio has been like getting something new and is the radio I spend most time with right now. I have 24 new log entries with this radio in the past 4 days. While it doesn't have as many presets as the 880 I find that there are more then enough with today's limited amount of Shortwave stations available to listen to. I store them as follows

• Time stations
• Weather stations
• Most listened to stations
• Rarely heard stations
• Starting frequency of ham bands

One limitation that I have found to still be true is the radio is not great on the whip alone. I have a 75' wire kit from Radio Shack and when this is clipped onto the whip the radio really comes to life.

I was to quick to give up on this radio and with some listening modifications it has become a real gem. I still look forward to new radios coming out but Covid-19 has slowed that progression and I also fear the day when the last Shortwave radios will be produced. Until then, happy listening.

7/16/2020 A final update to this post. I have not been impressed with the FM reception of this radio. A scan in the middle of the day locks in a half dozen stations. My Tecsun PL-380 finds over 30. Also when listening to ham jabber on SSB the radio lacks volume. Some talk is barely heard though noise is low. The radio has some pros and cons. The thing I will continue to use it for is doing full scans from 1711 kHz up to 26.1 mHz. All of my radios server a certain purpose. Took a little while to find this ones.