Message-ID: <C5A0C302816A400BBC72E6B83800449C@gnat>
From: "Alan Melia" <alan.melia@btinternet.com>
To: <rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org>
References: <581B3A1F.5060609@posteo.de> <1127299165.1072437.1478190721402@mail.yahoo.com> <EEDE957057374510A9F808FD2DD7EE26@gnat> <494474701.1172021.1478194490496@mail.yahoo.com> <20170114210433.GA25268@cs.utwente.nl>
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2017 22:14:07 -0000
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Subject: Re: Tesco 113B radio [was: Re: LF: Smart noise cancelling?!?]
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Hi again Pieter. That is very interesting. Yes I suppose 3kHz would fit the 
MW/LW "grid" of 9kHz frequency allocation spacing for BC stations. The 
design objectives may look odd, particularly to those of us who are older, 
but it is ineresting to look at the design in terms of manufacturability and 
cheapness. Labour is the most expensive item in electronics and technical 
labour is almose unaffordable for consumer items. So I think they design to 
avoid the need any manual setting up.......no trimmers or coils to adjust. 
Key pads are expensive and prone to fail, a potentiometer and a scale 
silk-screened on the knob or the case, is easier and probably indepenent of 
language, since the main supply target for these type of units is counties 
in Africa, S. America and Asia. Sale to Tesco is probably at a premium and 
help keep 3rd world prices down. Strangely though I think only Europe has LW 
BC stations.....and those are closing one by one.

Maybe the maker bought a bin full of surplus chips when a big manufacturer 
ceased production, and designed a product to use them up?.

Alan
G3NYK

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Pieter-Tjerk de Boer" <ptdeboer@cs.utwente.nl>
To: <rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 14, 2017 9:04 PM
Subject: Tesco 113B radio [was: Re: LF: Smart noise cancelling?!?]


>
> A couple of months ago, there was some discussion on this list about the
> cheap Tesco 113B kitchen radio performing very well on longwave (see
> below).
> This made me curious, particularly since it looked like a simple analog
> radio, the circuit diagram of which might teach us something, so I got
> myself one during my recent UK holiday.
>
> Opening it up showed that it is not analogue at all. It's built around
> an AKC6952 chip, of which a Chinese datasheet is at
> +http://travelx.org/dsp6952.pdf .
> This is a complete radio chip, presumably entirely digital, like e.g. the
> SiLabs Si48xx series.
> I knew such chips existed, but hadn't realized they were so cheap that
> nowadays even the cheapest "analogue looking" radios use them, although
> in hindsight it does make sense.
> Technically it seems a bit silly though: tuning a nicely synthesized radio
> via a mechanical potentiometer with a rather imprecise mechanical scale,
> just because that's how kitchen radios are supposed to look.
>
> I did some measurements on this radio using an AM signal generator.
> It seems to tune in 3 kHz steps, and if the incoming signal isn't quite
> on the tuned frequency, it seems to automatically make one such a 3 kHz
> step either way. This explains why it seems to suddenly "lock" onto a
> signal, as David wrote.
> Its AM detector seems to be a standard envelope detector, not a 
> synchronous
> detector, judging by the distortion when I notched the signal generator's
> carrier.
>
> I don't know why it would be more immune to noise than other radios.
> Its digital filters may well be much steeper than those of cheap real
> analog radios, thus keeping some noise out.
> Also, the google translation of the datasheet promises "Precise digital
> demodulation", whatever that means...
>
> Regards,
>  Pieter-Tjerk
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 03, 2016 at 05:34:50PM +0000, David Hine wrote:
>> Hi Alan, I am certain you are correct, but this Tesco set is much much 
>> quieter
>> than my Eton G3, which also has sync detection. There must be something 
>> else
>> too in that Tesco £9 cheapie -but what is it?? I know another user of one 
>> of
>> these he bought for TMS on R4 LW, and he says it's the only LW radio he 
>> can use
>> anywhere without any interference. Perhaps get one before they disappear 
>> from
>> the shelves? I bought several, as they are so cheap, with the view to one
>> day discovering this radio's 'secret'. I feel this 'secret' could be 
>> valuable
>> to know for other LF applications. Perhaps someone in this group has the
>> answer? Very kind regards, David.
>>
>>
>> ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
>> From: Alan Melia <alan.melia@btinternet.com>
>> To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org
>> Sent: Thursday, 3 November 2016, 17:14
>> Subject: Re: LF: Smart noise cancelling?!?
>>
>> Hi David, what describe (jump to frequency as you tune a station in) 
>> sounds
>> like a little bit of sophisticated radio electronics. It suggests that 
>> the unit
>> employs synchronous detection, somtimes called enhanced sideband 
>> detection I
>> think. I dont have details to hand but it would allow a clear signal to 
>> be
>> received in a much narrower receiver bandwidth than the 18kHz of the bog
>> standard diode detector usually used on cheapies. It also has the 
>> advantage
>> that it greatly reduces the effects of fading (apparent over-modulation) 
>> on the
>> audio quality.
>>
>>  It may sound unlikely at first sight at that price But sophisicated MSF
>> synching clocks are available for about the same price.
>>
>> Alan
>> G3NYK
>>
>>     ----- Original Message -----
>>     From: David Hine
>>     To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org
>>     Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2016 4:32 PM
>>     Subject: Re: LF: Smart noise cancelling?!?
>>
>>     Hi Stefan, Although this is a bit different, but also to do with 
>> noise, I
>>     bought a very cheap kitchen broadcast radio from Tesco for £9. It has 
>> Long
>>     Wave on it, and I am amazed it is the only LW radio I have that can 
>> receive
>>     all the stations that still are on LW without any background noise 
>> once a
>>     station is tuned in. It can be mains powered and next to a computer 
>> or TV,
>>     and still no local noise!! The model number of this Tesco kitchen 
>> radio is
>>     RAD - 113B. On tuning to a station, it suddenly 'locks on' to it with 
>> a
>>     small 'jump'. Then the local noise totally disappears, leaving only 
>> the
>>     required LW programme interference free!! Why is this? -could it be 
>> the way
>>     this very cheap radio detects the signal? If so, the detection method 
>> used
>>     in this cheap radio would be very useful for LF work, in which local 
>> mains
>>     noise is always a big problem. Perhaps someone here also owns this
>>     Tesco radio, and can answer why it is so quiet indoors where all my 
>> other
>>     Long Wave (and much more expensive) receivers are all swamped by 
>> local
>>     noise when used indoors?? I hope this is useful. Regards, David.
>>
>> 
>> ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
>>     From: DK7FC <selberdenken@posteo.de>
>>     To: "rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org" <rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org>
>>     Sent: Thursday, 3 November 2016, 13:22
>>     Subject: LF: Smart noise cancelling?!?
>>
>>     Hi all,
>>
>>     Last night i thought a bit about noise cancelling on LF/VLF. 
>> Depending
>>     on the band and distance and strength of the QRN, different settings 
>> for
>>     a noise blanker are used, or optimal. Different rise times, treshold
>>     levels and so on.
>>     I thought about propagation changes and different shapes of QRN 
>> bursts
>>     in the time domain, requiring different blanker settings.
>>
>>     Is it possible to program an 'intelligent' noise blanking system that 
>> is
>>     evaluating the input spectrum, looking at the shape/type of a sferic 
>> and
>>     automatically sets individual dynamic noise blanker parameters for 
>> each
>>     burst?
>>     Or do i miss something here?
>>
>>     Just a thought. I guess i'm not the first one who has this idea :-)
>>
>>     73, Stefan
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>