It’s only been 5 months since 13 shortwave radios did battle in the original Battle of the under $50 shortwave radios, but things have changed. There are new contenders.
XHDATA D-109WB
XHDATA D-109WB (top) and D-109 (bottom)
The XHDATA D-109 (shown above) was the winner of the first contest, a general coverage DSP based MW/LW/SW/FM radio that is an all-around good performer in its price class with notably good audio. There is a new model now, the D-109WB that adds, as you might expect, Weather Band. Reports are that the new kid performs the same as its older brother, so we’ll assume they are the same and to simplify things I’ll not revisit the D-109 in this challenge. I covered the original D-109 in my article, XHDATA D-109: A new radio. In addition to weather band, the D-109WB adds a Local/DX setting, tone control, an SOS siren and rubber buttons.
It is important to know that I live in a very weak MW signal area. People in areas with strong MW areas find shortwave on the D-109 radios almost unusable do to MW breakthrough.
Sihuadon R-108
Sihuadon R-108 (Amazon Product Photo)
The Sihuadon / Radiwow R-108 is my latest addition. I describe it as a “Mini Me” version of the Sihuadon / XHDATA D-808. The two radios are operationally similar and share many of the same features, operation and foibles, but without SSB and FM RDS on the R-108. The R-108 is significantly smaller, making it a better option for travel. Interestingly, it retains the AIR band feature. It also has a far better Operations Manual. Unlike the D-808, ATS memory is not divided into pages, simplifying operation.
LiJiANi Rd239
LiJiANi Rd239 (photo by author)
The Rd239 is an interesting new radio both for its coverage of Weather Band, VHF and Air Band, but also because it has an internal recording feature. It is the only conventional shortwave receiver I know of that has user-updatable firmware. The one tested here is version 2.9. My review of this radio is, LiJiANi Rd239: A different radio. I’ve previously compared the Rd239 and the D-109WB.
I bought my LiJiANi Rd239 in November of 2023, with Version 2.8 firmware. Prior to November, the radios had V2.7, and now in December, I’ve learned it’s 2.9!
I emailed the address in the user guide and they sent me the 2.9 release notes and firmware update with this warning:
Be careful when upgrading. If you cannot completely copy the upgrade file to the RD239, the radio may become bricked. There have been two cases. Please test the TF card before upgrading to ensure that the TF card is intact.
I plugged a 16G card into my computer and ran the check disk utility, then following the instructions provided in email:
These two radios, arriving within a couple of days of each other, cry out for comparison. Both are in roughly the same price range: the Rd239 was $39.80 delivered from Amazon (Black Friday sale) and the D-109WB costs $46 including shipping direct from the manufacturer in China. They both cover MW/SW/FM and NOAA Weather coverage with alerts. The XHDATA adds longwave and the LiJiANi adds AIR and VHF bands. Both have auto tune storage (ATS), rechargeable batteries, MP3 players and an external antenna jack.
The NOAA weather version of the D-109 will be familiar to owners of the original. Added are the 7 NOAA weather channels with alert, SOS button that emits a loud siren, a Local/DX setting and a Voice/Music setting.
Because features have been added without adding buttons, some shifting and doubling of function was inevitable. The ST/B (stereo/beep) button is replaced by long presses of the 6 and 4 buttons respectively, and specifically, the beep is disabled with a long press of the 6. The separate VF and VM buttons (something I liked) are now handled by one VF/VM button. The Sleep function is now an overload of the power button. SCAN is replaced with a long press of the VF/VM button. One “upgrade” with the weather band version is rubber buttons instead of hard plastic ones.
Manual band scanning on the D-109WB is frustrating. It has automatic dual tuning speed on the tuning knob. That is, if you turn slow it increments at one rate, and if you turn fast, it increments at another, so you turn faster to pass the 20 spaces between US FM channels, only to have the radio shift into fast mode and shoot past them and you have to go back and forth and back and forth. The up and down buttons are always in slow mode. This is probably the worst feature of this radio.
A Black Friday sale item caught my eye on Amazon for just under $40.
LiJiANi Rd239 MW/FM/AIR/VHF/Weather radio (photo by author)
The first thing that jumps out is the coverage: FM/MW/SW/AIR/VHF/Weather. It also has weather alerts, MP3 Play/Record, external antenna jack, AUX in jack and a flashlight/reading light. There are a number of things about this radio that are different from other radios I have owned, and I want to focus on those here, as well as cover features and performance.
I have never encountered a radio before that provides for user installed firmware updates. Mine has version 2.8. LiJiANi provides firmware updates upon request. Version 2.8 added AIR band squelch, something the radios didn’t have a month ago. The email address in the Version 2.1 User Guide was wrong; however, it’s updated today in the V2.9 manual. Thanks to a commenter for letting me know the correct address!
Update 2: Now it’s 3.0, changing the default tuning step on FM to 100 kHz instead of 50 (yea!). There is an updated 3.0 manual.
Update 3: Now it’s version 3.3. They added the sound equalization profiles to the radio function (before only for MP3). (Not sure what 3.1 and 3.2 added.)
Fit and Finish
The radio is fairly small, almost exactly the same size as the Tecsun PL-330, but a little thicker to accommodate optional AA batteries that can be installed instead of the provided BL-5C. Specifically it’s 28 x 85 x 138 mm (1.1 x 3.4 x 5.4 inches).
Close up, you can see that the radio doesn’t look expensive. The matte finish on the front panel is just too grainy. Still, the buttons work quite well and the tuning knob feels sturdy and works flawlessly. The telescopic antenna is quite thin, necessary to get a good length in such a small collapsed package. Take care when collapsing the antenna by starting from the base segment of the antenna and working outward.
Operation
The Rd239 doesn’t seem to copy any other radio I’ve seen. For example, the radio can be set for 9 or 10 kHz step on MW. That’s quite common, but on every other radio I have seen, once the step is set, the radio advances only on the channels common to that step. On the Rd239, the radio steps the set amount regardless of the standard channels. So if the radio is set to a frequency of 555 kHz and the step is set to 10 kHz, the next steps will be 565, 575, 585 …, rather than 560, 570, 580….
The biggest operational annoyance on the radio is FM tuning. The tuning step is 50 kHz, and in North America that means you have to advance the tuning knob 4 times to advance one 200 kHz channel. [Update: This is changed to 100 kHz with firmware version 3.0. Thank you.]
The display backlight comes on when a button is pushed or the tuning knob turned. It times out after 5 seconds. I can’t find any way to keep it on. That’s a shame because of one rather significant feature on this radio that’s extremely rare now: the buttons are illuminated along with the display! [Update: As of firmware version 2.9, the back light can be set to stay on up to 20 seconds. I think that is a good compromise.]
I had only a short time to get used to my Tesla Model Y before I was in a situation where I had to rent a car and drive it about 100 miles. The rental was an Audi Q8 from Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
I can’t review a car based on a 100-mile drive, but this rare glimpse of the “other side” (I’ve driven Teslas for 7 years), helped me think about how Tesla does things compared to other cars.
Audi Q8
The Audi Q8 is supposedly a high-end model. I found the controls a maze with stalks sticking out of the steering wheel in every direction. Some of the stalks had multiple controls on them. There were paddles too. I couldn’t find the cruise control (it was on a small down-pointing stalk on the left) and had to look on YouTube to see how it worked. The car had adaptive cruise control, meaning that it maintained a specified distance between cars; two paddles set the distance. There was also a touch screen and voice controls, but I didn’t find any voice commands that worked, and when I tried navigation, I got a message saying it required a subscription the car didn’t have. The gear selector was on the center console and it had a button on it too. There are a total of 3 display screens.
Audi Q8 Interior (Carscoops) Some of the stalks are not visible in the photo
And then there was gas. The car was received with very little gas in it, so I had to fill-up. I took an exit labeled “gas,” and drove a while finding no gas. I tried a second exit and eventually found some gas. I fully expected to need some lever in the cabin to open the gas filler cover, but it didn’t require one. Gas pumps are complicated these days — you have to convince them that you don’t want to join their loyalty program.
The one plus for the Q8 was its blind spot warning system. It was easy to see and it worked well.
Tesla Model Y
There are few controls on a Model Y: two stalks, each with a button on the end, and two scroll buttons on each side of the steering wheel (also a convention horn button).
Tesla Model Y interior (photo from Motor Trend)
I’ll readily admit that Tesla has a learning curve. The few controls there are perform multiple functions, but the function makes sense in context. Voice commands are flexible and cover a wide range of functions. It’s also very helpful that the main controls setting provides a search function (voice commands also can search for a setting).
Charging is far more simple than buying gas. The car navigates to the charger automatically and there is nothing required beyond plugging the cable in. Billing is automatic.
The interior of Model Y is definitely spartan, or as I prefer to say “uncluttered.” I found the seats more comfortable in Model Y than the Audi.
Tesla has a blind spot warning system too, but it requires more of the driver to glance over at the touch screen and interpret the side view camera, compared to Audi’s signal light on the side rear view mirror. (The latest Teslas have a blind spot warning system similar to the Audi.) [Update: Tesla is providing an over-the-air update to its older cars to give a prominent red bar on the touch screen for blind spot warning.]
With all that said, I think Model Y is probably harder to control on the first encounter, but much easier long term. And with Tesla’s level of automation, the driver rarely has to access the controls.
I have some shortwave radios upstairs in my study where I spend most of my time at home. Some other are downstairs on a shelf above my workbench in the shop. I talked about my upstairs and downstairs radios in my article, Sharing the love (see article for photos). Since then that division of radios in two groups has been remarkably stable, except for new radios, including, a Tecsun PL-880 and a Tecsun PL-990, both of which are upstairs.
Upstairs
Among the upstairs radios, the most-often used are the Tecsun PL-880 and PL-990. I just can’t decide between those two. The Tecsun PL-330 is also there, but it’s now primarily used as a travel radio. The official upstairs list is:
Tecsun PL-990
Tecsun PL-880
XHDATA D-109
Tecsun PL-330
XHDATA D-219
Tecsun PL-118 (FM only)
I use upstairs radios outdoors, where I hook up my 20-ft wire up a tree antenna (WUT). I go out when I’m trying to grab a particular station that I’ve read about online, or try to follow the changing frequencies of the Music 4 Joy broadcast. There’s just too much electrical noise to use them indoors where they’re stored, near the computer. I’ll also grab an upstairs radio when I’m going somewhere, perhaps to the park, to try some listening.
Downstairs
The most-often used downstairs radios are the Tecsun PL-660 and the Eton Elite Executive. The other ones there are used for comparison, testing and frankly some are just stored.
I use downstairs radios in three ways. Downstairs is where my MLA-30+ antenna terminates and so when I use that antenna, it’s most often with a downstairs radio and that’s more often at night. Downstairs is a walk-out basement that’s open to the north and east and there’s a spot that is relatively far away from electrical interference and sometimes I listen to radio in that spot using the receiver’s telescopic antenna. I also use those radios when I’m going outdoors for comparisons using the WUT.
Car radio
My car has a built-in FM radio, but I also carry a Degen DE15 shortwave radio and a reel antenna that I can plug in and clip on somewhere.
Degen DE15 AM/FM/Shortwave radio
The DE15 is an older digital signal processing (DSP) unit and it’s quite good for a shirt pocket radio. SW coverage is 2.3 – 23 MHz. It uses 3 AAA batteries that can be recharged in car with a USB cable.
[Update] At least for now, the DE15 is downstairs and my Raddy RF75A is in the car since it has weather band. Unfortunately, my new car only has a USB-C charging port and that won’t work with any of my radios.
Future
The question for the future is whether to sell one of the high-end Tecsun radios (the PL-880 or PL-990) and cut down the number of upstairs receivers. Also, should I put the PL-330 in the car, a better radio that’s not getting much play these days?
Soon I’m expecting a new radio, an HF F111 that looks like a Bluetooth speaker with a radio in it costing around $15. It will probably go downstairs.
[Update] The HF F111 is neither upstairs nor downstairs. It’s at the Goodwill store. What a load of junk!
And of course, I bought another radio, an XHDATA D-109WB (the third D-109-series I have). It’s the weather band version of the D-109. I ordered my original D-109 right after it went on sale, and shortly thereafter XHDATA contacted me to say it had shipped but was defective (a problem with direct entry of some frequencies) and that they were sending me another one. That made two. The working model is upstairs. The recalled one (which works fine except for direct entry of some shortwave frequencies), is used as a bedside clock radio. I suspect the new weather band version will go upstairs and the previous one downstairs.
There is another radio upstairs in separate place, a Mesqool CR1009 Pro. It’s a weather radio with a shortwave function that’s virtually useless. Since the XHDATA will provide weather, the Mesqool might go down for storage. Since it’s solar powered, I may still keep it upstairs in a window.
Update: 2024
There have been some changes upstairs. I sold the PL-880 and added a Sihuadon R-108 and a LiJiANi Rd239. The DE15 has been replaced by a Raddy RF75A in the car (the DE15 is now downstairs). There is also an XHDATA D-608 looking for a place to live.
I talked about my Under $50 Radios and my Under $100 Radios and now it’s time to take a look at the much smaller top shelf. The group is:
Model
Amazon.com price1
Firmware
Eton Elite Executive
$199.00
Unknown
Tecsun PL-660
n/a
6601
Tecsun PL-880
$169.98
8820
Tecsun PL-990
$279.98
99028
1Prices as of September 13, 2023
Popular wisdom says that at this level all radios get the same stations, and the differences are found in features, operation and quality. I’m not going to dispute that. What I am going to do here is to investigate those differences and give my opinion on the value question.
Introducing the Radios
I’ve talked about these radios separately and in groups before:
At this price point, one might think that all the radios would have the same features, but that is not the case. All the radios receive LW/MW/FM/SW. They all support SSB reception. They all have clock/alarm/sleep timers. They all have display lighting and direct frequency entry, but there are also many differences. Here’s a feature comparison table to try to sort out them out.
Feature
Elite Exec
PL-660
PL-880
PL-990
AIR band
Y
Y
SW Auto tune storage (ATS)
Y
Y
Y
Time Zone set
Y
Line In
Y
FM RDS
Y
Bluetooth
Y
MP3 Player
Y
Sync Detection
Y
Y
?
Y
Line out (AUX)
Y
Y
Y
Battery
4 AA
4 AA
18650
18650
USB Charge
Y
Y
Tone control
Y
Y
Y
Carry strap
Y
Y
Y
External MW antenna jack
See note
Y
Memory presets
700
2000
3150
3150
Memory page labels
Y
Audio power
?
≥ 450mW
≥ 450mW
≥ 450mW
Speaker
1W
?
3W
3W
Tuning
DSP
Analog
Analog
Analog
Detection
DSP
Analog
DSP
DSP
Air squelch
Y
n/a
n/a
Calibration
See note
Y
Y
Feature difference matrix
Notes:
Newer versions of the PL-660 have a frequency calibration procedure, but mine does not.
The PL-880 supposedly has a hidden feature to use the external antenna jack for MW/LW, but the procedure is incredibly convoluted, and it appears more a bug than a feature — one that is fixed in my firmware.
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