Joined in 2023 
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63 About this deal
I) Amidon 7.5” x .5” ferrite rod, part no. R61-050-750 (MW model) OR part no. R33-050-750 (LW Model), available at http://www.amidoncorp.com/rods-and-tiles/ It is confusing that the document number of the schematic contains “Eton G3”. But as Etón G3 was a traditional double conversion receiver without DSP, it cannot be the receiver shown in the schematic. If your new review has not been Approved after several days you can assume that it was found to not be within the product review T's&C's shown below during screening. The problem is that there is no button labeled “Charge” on the radio. The manual elsewhere indicates that it is the SSB button, but in any case, the radio starts charging without pressing anything. The D-808 is based on an earlier radio, the Digitech AR-1780, that uses AA batteries which might or might not be rechargeable. It needed a control to tell it whether to charge batteries or not and it had the word CHARGE under the SSB button. The D-808 uses an 18650 battery that’s always rechargeable so there was no need for the switch function, and it’s manual just copied the obsolete text from the old manual.
CCrane Skywave (the original - no ssb) - Good for FM & Weather Alerts. Bounces between the car console and the house. The Si4735 DSP chip has markings of “3560, DCUL, .738” and provides a wide range of AM bandwidth choices for the Medium Wave DXer (6K, 4K, 3K, 2.5K, 2K, 1.8K and 1K). These perform very well, and as with the other DSP-enhanced portables, the narrowest bandwidth (1K) provides the most sensitive AM band reception. The XHDATA D-808 is a decent radio at an excellent price but I don’t think it’s quite as good as the Eton Satellit (few radios are, in my opinion) and with the recent drop in price of the Satellit, that’s the radio I most often recommend. This is making an old dream come true for me – a full-featured “communication receiver” (well, almost) that’s “wearable”, one that allows me to enjoy hands-free and hassle-free full shortwave reception on all bands without compromises (particularly in sensitivity) when I do the boring walks the doctor prescribed! The XHDATA D-808 has a nice display which can show Time & Frequency together which is very convenient, along with additional options of Signal Strength/Signal to Noise Ratio, Temp (Fahrenheit or Centigrade), Alarm Set Time and Time which the radio defaults to when turned on. The signal readings are relative and can’t be directly related to typical S-Meter readings but nevertheless they provide interesting info about what you’re tuned to and can be a definite advantage while tuning or antenna aiming. Display Illumination is automatic or the Light Button will turn it on permanently if desired…another nice feature.Like Andy, I’m not seeing any major differences at all. The front panel board is near-identical; the front end / RF board uses lightly different transformers, different style of variable caps associated with each, and apart from that the only real difference I’m seeing is a slightly different layout around the power connector and the generally poorer assembly quality of the Digitech.
Great review. Would be interesting if you tested them both with a passive MW loop as I find that the xhdata is rejecting signals rather then enhancing them and raising the noise floor, whereas the Tecsun pl-880 will accept the tuned passive loop. I see a section of circuit board with a chip, and components labelled C51, R10 & R6 in both sets of photos.I also use a Marantz PM5005 integrated amp to route audio to bookshelf speakers with great results, but all amps connected to ac supply will not work, they need to have very clean power supply so as to not introduce noise and signal interference. The 808 was and still is compared to the CCrane Skywave SSB, a much smaller and compact receiver. Unfortunately, in my experience both suffer from soft muting. The radio seems to have a high threshold for recognizing a signal, so it "finds" far fewer frequencies than it can actually tune. To be really clear on that point, I can tune frequencies manually that are perfectly listenable but the D-808 doesn't find them when auto-tuning. I have compared this function with a number of other portables and ALL of them find more frequencies than the D-808. Note, the same inability to recognize a listenable frequency while scanning also affects scanning with the slewing buttons. I found enough differences between the Satellit and the D-808 to make me suspect they use DSP chips from different vendors. After comparing the two on various weak & strong signals I decided that for my purposes I prefer the D-808, and sold my Executive Satellit model. Jim, thank you for your suggestions. I had Degen1103 but sold it – it had encoder problems. I wish I knew it is that good on LW. Sangean is way to much expensive. I’ll try to find 7600GR then.
I’ve been operating under an assumption similar to yours: that a retailer like Kaito USA may re-badge this radio for the US market. In the meantime, D-808 retailers aren’t allowed to be competitive in the US/Canada.Other than that, it seems to abide <10m/30ft of wire just fine and it gets along with my ML-200 active loop, currently indoors with a rigid 80cm aluminum loop, unless the RRI transmitters populate 49 and/or 41m after midnight. That station occasionally hits the 9+60 mark on my SDR with a dipole and when they’re on, the D-808 has to be tuned far away from these bands or disconnected from the loop to stop the pumping, desensitizing and intermodulation products. Interestingly, strong signals often make the filter drop out (as described under “SSB reception”) as well. A theory could be that this happens when an off-band signal (and/or the AGC causing “clipping”) makes an AD-converter run out of bits. Refer to the photo above. Pull the Litz wires up out of the previous position, and place a clean rag underneath them (on top of the circuit board) to completely protect the circuit board from any solder which might accidentally drop down during the tinning process. Using your hot 25w soldering iron melt a generous amount of solder on its tip, and work the soldering iron tip slowly and patiently around the circumference of each Litz wire end until there is a bright, shiny solder length of at least 1/4” (6mm) in a cylindrical pattern at the end of each Litz wire. When doing this, take great care not to allow any solder to drip down onto the circuit board below (i.e., make sure that your rag completely covers the circuit board). The final appearance of your Litz wire lead ends should resemble those in the photo. There is no tone control, nor a Local/DX switch. The display is smaller than I would prefer. I want the frequency to be front and center on the display, but it’s no larger than other information and it’s not in the center. I do like that both the frequency and the time can be on the display at the same time (the Sangean can’t do that). Documentation
Sensitivity in LW is very low, like all chinese radios. I made the antenna mod in the PL-380 and I wonder if it wouldn’t be possible to do a similar mod in this radio (but chances are that there is not enough place in it …). I tested my D-808 with the low impedance AKG K240. There is low dB hiss even if you turn the volume all the way down. When you turn the volume up to 5%, you can still hear the hissing. In FM mode, this low noise is more noticeable. However, this hiss is not heard above 10% of the sound. Adopts DSP (Digital Signal Processing) technique, high-frequency analog, medium-frequency circuit, various frequency conversion, highly improves the receiver sensitivity, selectivity and anti-image interference capability The manual says that the AM bandwidth filters are 500 Hz, 1K, 1.2K, 2.2K, 3K and 4K. Those are the values for SSB mode only. For AM the values are 1k, 1.8k, 2k. 2.5k, 3k, 4k and 6k. The “k” shouldn’t be capitalized.Here was a small, well-designed DSP radio that burst upon the scene with outstanding capabilities and which even today is prized among those who own it. Need I repeat? SEVEN bandwidths in AM mode, and MW, and SIX in SSB and LW.
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