How does the TEF 6686 perform on shortwave?
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- čas přidán 16. 09. 2023
- It says its a "Full Band Receiver", most people buy it as an FM DX receiver but how does the 6686 perform on shortwave? I put it up against the Sihaudon D808 and work out which performs best.
- Věda a technologie
Thanks for doing this test Kevin.
I’ve got an itch to buy another portable, something a bit different to the usual Xhdata, Tecsun etc. but the internal noise problem on this has ruled it out.
73 Franco
I also came across a video where they are telling that the TEF 6686 radio receivers are mainly to receive FM band. For the Shortwave band the TEF 6686 is NOT a solid performer!. But there is a TEF 6686 that performs well on Shortwave and it is the Qodosen SR-286 radio receiver.
Yes i agree. I have an SR286 and it receives well on shortwave
I'm not sure if you're on the TEF 6686 Discord group and have been following the firmware development from PE5PVB on there? I bought mine primarily for FM and ignored shortwave as I had the same results as yourself. I read a few posts on the Discord group the other day and one said it's the equal to his ICF 2010/2001D on shortwave! A few others said it outperformed their D-808. I think the key is having the latest firmware from PE5PVB and adjusting the many AM settings we have to play with. I was recommended some settings and quite surprised at the change in performance. I need to play around with it some more but it was certainly the equal to my D-808 on some of the weak signals I tested it with. On my particular TEF it makes a huge difference turning the screen off. I have the silver with three knobs. I need to test some more but it's light years better than it was.
The first 2 weeks this radio worked like a charm. Then suddenly it quit picking up stations altogether. It appears to be an issue with the antenna port. The antenna doesn’t screw all the way down due to two screws in the way.
Sorry to hear this. Quality control on these radios is not the best.
I just bought a Qodosen DX-286 for $80.00. The TEF is selling for around $140.00. Nice display, but WAY too expensive.
They should have used non-fisher-price buttons. Just mho 😁
I've built a portable receiver using TEF6686 and I have to say it works very well on SW. I used a different micro and a smaller B/W display which draws very low power and probably is quieter than this color display. These chinese radios are built very bad and the display and MCU do have a lot of noise. As I can observe from the video, the "Display off" function doesn't do anything other than turn the screen black, it doesn't really shut it off or put it in a proper standby/sleep mode.
I have tested it against a few good SW radios and it is the same or it outperforms some of them, so I think the problem with these is the bad construction, all they did is copy someone's project and put it in a nice case, that's it. So really I have to say that the TEF chip performs really good on all bands, the problem really is the construction itself, which is of poor quality in this case !
Thanks for the comment. I agree that the TEF seems sensitive on SW but the internal noise from the unit makes it pretty useless on my radio at least. That said I am very happy with the FM performance.
Hello Andy. Care to share some details on the diy project?
These radios are priced quite steeply last time I checked. Hopefully saving some money and invest in proper building might be better.
Cheers ✌🏼
@@DXPedro I don't know if I will ever make it public, it seems that everytime someone brings some project like this, someone takes it and changes a few things here and there and then they sell it on aliexpress or something...
@@andyy2008 I can understand u
Although its nice that something u made someone sels in bulk making it acsessible to more people
The problem is that chinese like to cut corners, so u end up getting worst product
Was wondering what micro controller u used? I like ESP32 because they are easy to reflash over usb and because they have bootloader in rom, there is no way to brick anything, but they do create noise which is a problem
Not sure if its even possible to buy micro controller that would not produce any noise
@@DXingSlovenija I have used a PIC18F26K80 which in the datasheet states that is XLP, which stands for eXtreme Low Power. It has an internal RC oscillator that can be software controlled, from about 32kHz to about 16MHz, and even has a high speed mode of 64MHz using some internal PLL circuit. In my project, it works at 8MHz, which I find it more than enough. Using it's internal oscillator makes it very quiet, I have an option to turn the screen off (sleep mode) and everything is quiet even on long wave. This particular micro doesn't have an USB interface, but there are some that have it, I only use PICKit3 for programming and it's fine for my use case. The power on/off is done by software, and the MCU shuts off the tuner module, audio amplifiers, display, and then goes into sleep mode. In the power off state, the whole circuit draws about 10uA, which I think is very good.
I have blue tef6686 and it seems from some reason he much better work on SW than your Silver tef6686. My blue tef6686 works outstanding on SW and easily beat my Tecsun pl 310ET who is veryy good on SW :) Even he have much clearer sound! I was stunned with TEF again jusat as on FM i simply cannot believe that he is better than my very good SW Tecsun radio!!
I will made a video , TEF6686 can be on SW beast just as on FM, both are frequency modulated only FM have shortener waves !
But you need to shortener telescopic antenna only on last 3. parts - that tiniest on the top! :) ) Try it ! 73s!
I gave the blue 1 too with the two speakers on bottom and on shortwave it's really gud too.
@@corpo33 yes, just as i said :) Blue one seems little better than Silver ? What do you think? Are you compare them without LNA - in the se conditions ? :)
@@goranjovic3174 a si ga odpru goran?
Mogoče ma moder rf shield, siv pa nima
Moj je prišu brez rf shielda (moram natuhtat kje se rf shield sploh samostojno lahko kupi) in se kar pozna
D-808 a far superior receiver in terms of reception, the TEF might have the looks but it doesn't have the brains...the noise on it is a deal breaker...thanks for comparing.
Yes not good on SW but Band 2 FM is good.
The only good thing about this tef is the fact u can add ur own brains to it in terms of custom software
But sadly it has the noise problems
At least on FM its good