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Hints, Tips and Solutions (Do NOT post requests for help here) If you have any useful general hints and tips for vintage technology repair and restoration, please share them here. PLEASE DO NOT POST REQUESTS FOR HELP HERE!

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Old 30th Sep 2020, 2:03 pm   #1
agardiner
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Default Tecsun PL360 improvement

Hello,

So not a vintage radio, but many of you may own one of these pocket world receivers, and I have a tip which I hope will be of use.

The supplied external LW/MW antenna is rubbish. Really poor MW reception and LW is virtually non-existent. You can get after-market antennas, but they are usually much larger and place a strain on the 3.5mm socket.

The supplied unit is easy to dismantle and improve. The end caps the the protective cap round the jack plug simply rotate and pull off, revealing the expected ferrite rod coil. The coil however is poor and wound along the whole length. By winding a replacement round one end only, or as in my case, cutting a salvaged one from an old portable radio to length and moving the coil to one end, improved the performance of this set tremendously. Mine went from a totally dead LW to pulling in 6 stations clearly and lots of MW ones.

If you own one of these then it is well worth experimenting with this. Hope this helps someone and have fun!

Adrian.
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Old 30th Sep 2020, 6:58 pm   #2
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Default Re: Tecsun PL360 improvement

Mine works fine, perhaps you had a dodgy antenna.
 
Old 7th Oct 2020, 11:53 am   #3
Hybrid tellies
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Default Re: Tecsun PL360 improvement

I have the Tecsun PL380 with the same problem. MW is ok but LW is very poor. I think many of these newer radios which use DSP suffers the same poor performance on LW.
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Old 7th Oct 2020, 5:03 pm   #4
agardiner
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Default Re: Tecsun PL360 improvement

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hybrid tellies View Post
I have the Tecsun PL380 with the same problem. MW is ok but LW is very poor. I think many of these newer radios which use DSP suffers the same poor performance on LW.
I agree, LW does seem to be an afterthought. It is interesting with these Tecsun's that you can switch LW on and off. Not sure why anyone buying such a receiver would want to do that!

Well worth experimenting with the antenna then, my LW is superb now.
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Old 8th Oct 2020, 10:32 am   #5
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Default Re: Tecsun PL360 improvement

I have seen the mods for the PL380 to improve AM reception by fitting a larger ferrite rod aerial. But I think it will spoil the looks of this small compact little radio.
As its a part of my growing collection of small multiband radios i can live with this but it is a shame otherwise these small DSP radios would be almost perfect.
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