XieguG106 HF Transceiver SDR SSB/CW/AM/WFM Support FT8

Super satisfied with the G106 and find it being my go to QRP more often than expected.Good reciever with all of the basic functions required. It's smple to operate, and a pleasure to make qso's. The reciever actually seems better than the big brother g90.

There are pros and cons about any purchase, and price is often a part of one or the other. I want to share my experience with this radio compared to others according to price and performance as well as with features that may or may not be available in this radio.I bought this radio to see what it is like. Its price is nearly $1.000 less than my mobile HF rig that I use on my desk.This is pretty much a no-frills, basic radio and it works. It is about $240 as I write this, and there are other brands under $150 as well.It is promoted for use for CW and digital. I bought the DE-19 digital interface and have used it for making contacts on FT8. I also make contacts in SSB and CW. It can be a fun radio to play with.One of the things about it is that it doesn't seem to get hot. I left the key down on high power for over just under 2 minutes and it still did not get hot. I would not test that with my ICOM 100 watt station at full power and I know already that it would get hot if I did.This is a very simple radio to use. It has a simple menu with no real sub-menus. A few have multiple options, but that's about it. It has dedicated USB and LSB digital modes which give it wide band receive and sends audio and control to the back ports to work with the DE-19.The mic is light weight and uses a standard 4-pin telephone connector. Inside the mic head, there is a jack to plug in a speaker or headphones. It is not convenient, especially if you want to use an external speaker. The jack has a cover with a plug to fit in the jack, and it is so tight that it gets in the way. I have a really hard time plugging a connector into it because it is in the way. But, reports are that the audio is good.Power is weird and random. High power is the highest power in all the bands, but some mid power outputs are lower than the low power output, and one is the same. You will void the warranty if you break the seal, but I am guessing that it might can be set internally somewhere to be more consistent. I'm not going to find out.High power is different on most bands. I get as much as 8 watts and as little as 4 watts on different bands in random order.The case is a heavy duty steel of some sort, but the whole radio weighs less than a pound. The built in speaker is not bad and is on top of the radio. It has four rubber feet, but they don't grip my desk top well. If I drop the mic, the radio is so light that the mic pulls it off the desk.There is nowhere to mount any kind of bracket or stand to the radio. I suppose someone could take the feet off and engineer something, but it won't be convenient. To me, this is a negative because I wanted to put it in a case for a portable station and it will have to be physically modified to mount it in there.Can you use the radio as-is or do you have to buy more?Yes, and no. If you have a battery or other power source and a tuned antenna, you can plug it in and start playing radio right away. But for portable work, I would say it is lacking some important features found in even the cheaper radios.SWR meter. When I first set this up, I plugged it into a jumper with an adapter to go from BNC to SO-239 between the radio and my antenna tuner. When I would operate CW or SSB for a short while, it would quit transmitting. I ordered the replacement and rearranged my radio desk to accommodate it better and discovered that the jumper coax was intermittently bad. My tuner and SWR meter were on the other end of the wire. Even the radios selling for half the price of this one have internal SWR meters.I will say, that the radio was not damaged by the high SWR, but it did suppress the power output and even turned it off at times, but when the wire was replaced, the radio worked flawlessly from then on. After this, I ordered the LED QRP SWR meter for an additional $30, which I consider a necessity, not a luxury.Obviously, you need some kind of working antenna for this radio. I happen to use an LDG auto-tuner with a random wire antenna. The tuner tunes anything as long as it has 1 watt driving it. Since the radio drops power when it gets high SWR, I have to tune it on high power or it may drop power below 1 watt and quit tuning the antenna. High power never drops out.Receive quality. There are no settings for the SSB receiver. You get whatever it has been set to from the factory. On CW, you can choose between 500, 250 and 50 Hz audio filter. Compared to the Icom, when I tune the same signal I have on the G106 and compare it in the Icom, the filter-2 setting on the Icom is about the same as on the Xiegu. In CW, the G106 is default set to 50Hz and it sound similar to the Icom default setting with the same band width.Sensitivity, is another issue. I could tune a signal on the Icom, even in its default settings, and the G106 doesn't hear it at all. I can also fine tune a weak signal to come in from barely audible to understandable on the Icom either in CW or SSB. So, the Xiegu sensitivity is lower, but, to me, that doesn't matter much to me. There are many, many times more stronger stations that the G106 can hear than those only the Icom can hear. As far as I'm concerned, you get enough receiver for your money with this radio.AM Broadcast interference. I wanted to take this portable and I heard from others that sometimes it gets interference from AM Broadcast stations. I don't have that problem here, but to be safe, I did order a filter, anyway, for the field.On my desk, hooked up to my radio laptop and my antenna, it is a fair radio. It is not great and it is not bad. It is just a working radio on CW, SSB or FT8.I am comparing the cost of this radio with the G90. I've decided to upgrade to the G90 and here is why.The G90 has an internal SWR meter, an antenna tuner that seems to impress even the critics, and a little more power output. The cost of the meter, a nano-vna, and an antenna tuner with the G106 comes to about $420 and the price of the G90 is $445.The G106 says you need at least a 3 amp power supply, but mine only uses about 1.1-1.8 Amps on high power transmit and only .3 or so amps on receive with the light on.On a 6 amp-hour LiFePO4 battery, I expect it will get 3.5 hours of key down time at high power. At 50-50 tx/rx use, which would be really heavy use, I suspect one could get about 10 hours or so on a 6AH LiFePO4.What do I think?I think this is a good little radio for the money. It really needs the SWR meter, and I would recommend the LED version they sell here on Amazon. It's not a bad receiver and it works well on CW, SSB and FT8 that I have used. If I had no other radio to compare this to, I would say its a great little radio, easy to learn and use. I would never miss what I wouldn't know the Icom could receive. There are many, many times more stronger stations that this station can talk to. And consider that my antenna is a random wire weaving back and forth on my balcony banister. It's not even very high in the air.I like this radio, and the real reason I want to get the G90 is because I have the money and everything I want in the portable station will be in the radio except for the antenna, and I think the G90 even has an internal battery.So, make an informed decision. Compare the features of this radio and those in lower priced radios and higher priced ones you can afford. Consider how you want to use your radio and what you can afford. You might find that this radio will work very well for you, or you may find another radio will be a better match for your style of operating.I like this one, I just want a little more than it offers.

This is a decent HF QRP transceiver for SSB, CW, FT8, etc.There is no built-in tuner, which leads to the question: Why not a G90?By the time you add a tuner, G90 looks not so bad for the added price, plus the other features and capabilities of the G90.Granted, this is a QRP device, but the same could be said of the G90 when properly managed. The monochrome display seems to be a bit of a downgrade vs other Xiegu models.I am sure that somewhere somebody needs a low-power lightweight 3-5W QRP transceiver with 80-10 coverage and no ATU. If so, this is the transceiver that you have been looking for.

A nicely built unit. Really solid. Functions are well documented in the manual. Clear display. Engineering-wise really nice. My dislike comes from the weak reception. I compare it to my Malahit SD receiver, which runs circles around it. Even with antenna couplers and tuning, I won't get the Xiegu to pull in signals really well.