Here on Ebay, we have offered and sold the highly regarded County Comm GP-5/SSB radio and others have sold the Tecsun PL-360 radio. The main difference between the two radios is that the GP-5/SSB offers the user access to decoding sideband radio signals often found on the amateur radio bands and also found with marine or air weather given on the shortwave bands....the PL-360 does not offer sideband, but otherwise is a good radio for shortwave listening.
The GP-5/SSB utilizes a telescopic antenna for shortwave HF reception and this does a respectable job. In addition, the purchase of the radio also includes other items such as a 15' wire to clip onto the radio for improved reception. This 15' wire makes a nice improvement for the radio to be able to grab those signals and this is especially helpful when trying to capture the weaker amateur radio signals. Over time, we have had feedback from a couple of amateur radio operators that the GP-5/SSB can be connected to an outside dipole antenna with great results. The problem with mating the outside dipole to the radio is presented with the head scratching consideration of connecting a coax cable to this little radio. One owner of the radio told us that when connected to his outside dipole "the radio came alive with thousands of signals". He was kind enough to forward a picture of his adapter which required soldering a SO-259 to one end of a cable and a connector to the other end of the cable to be inserted into the radio. This was nice, but we wanted something a bit easier to manage. He also informed us that he determined that the AM antenna input is a parallel connection to the telescopic antenna.
We were intrigued by his idea of connecting an outside antenna and his method of doing so. We then located a satisfactory connector that can be mated to the PL-259 connector from a dipole or other outside antenna and does not require the need to solder. You merely attach your male PL-259 to this connector and insert it into the radio marked "AM Antenna".
Let us now take a moment to address a question that you are likely wondering to yourself. "Does the outside antenna cause the radio to overload?" The answer is, it depends, but typically it does not cause the radio to overload. Most handheld radios would overload very badly with attachment to any outside antenna, but you see, the GP-5/SSB was designed to prevent overloading. One of the advantages of advanced circuit design of the radio is that it will actually attenuate the signal slightly just under the overload point. You do not hear any attenuation due to the minor graduation of the attenuation, but it silently protects the radio from overloading. During our testing, we found that this worked the vast majority of the time and resulted in astonishing signal capture by this tiny radio. However, we did find that we had to turn off the preamp that we had connected to our antenna and which we normally use to boost the antenna's signal. The digital s-meter on the GP-5/SSB reads up to a top scale of 99 dBu. In a couple of instances where the signals went over this threshold, we heard distortion and clipping of the signal and overloading elsewhere on the radio. This occurred with WWCR on 4840 KHz during the evening when it normally offers a powerful 60 "over" signal here in our central PA home. Thus, during our trials, there were a couple of instances where we switched from our highest gain dipole (Alpha Delta DX Ultra) to a standard dipole antenna and the radio did not overload.
To summarize, the radio is well designed to handle overloading, but it is not bulletproof. If you are using a super dipole antenna during the evening hours, you may experience an issue. However, if you do not use such an antenna or if you use the antenna during lower signal times, it is our belief that you should not have any issue with overloading.
If you like to experiment, this connector may add a bit of fun to your use of the GP-5/SSB or Tecsun PL-360 radios. Additionally, the connector adds more versatility to the radio which can then be relied on for better signal reception during emergencies. Since the radio can operate for over 200 hours on 3 AA alkaline batteries, you can imagine how helpful this would be during a power outage when access to AC power is not readily available. We use lithium AA batteries in our personal GP-5/SSB and this should extend the time of use between battery replacement to over 1,000 hours. Lithium batteries also have a long shelf life should you place the radio in a drawer or auto glove box for those incidental uses or when it is called upon for an emergency.
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