lightweight am/fm radio

[Ed Barkowski]

Trying to bring this thread back alive for a moment to ask:

ANYTHING NEW ON THE UL FM RADIO FRONT?

(I'm looking for a tiny receiver to keep me company on the A.T. this year. Thoughts?)

THANKS — ED

[Gordon Smith]

I have the predecessor to this radio. Not tiny exactly, but plenty small and very lightweight. Well made. Great reception. Bonus for backpacking is the ability to receive NOAA weather radio broadcasts. AM is nice option too. At night you can pick up AM stations from hundreds of miles away. Great way to relax in the tent in the evening.

G

[Dale Wambaugh]

I use one of the Nike/Philips armband radios– toss the armband and use generic earbuds. 2.1oz with one AAA battery.

http://www.amazon.com/Philips-Nike-PSA110-Armband-Radio/dp/B0002L59BW

I think the trend is towards MP3 players with FM radio built in. The challenge is finding a good one that takes AAA batteries. If you can live with the duration of rechargeable batteries, the selection is huge. None will receive like a pocket portable with a telescoping antenna. They are tiny and most aren't very expensive.

I haven't tried this one, but the specs are representative:
http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/950166/Kanguru-Micro-MP3-digital-player-radio/

[Greg Bohm]

Any small, light NWS receivers out there with AM/FM/SW?

[Blair Gentes]

I am also in the hunt for a lightweight am/fm radio.

The sangean SR-2 looks promising. Anybody ever try it?

Where I live, most daytime talk radio is on AM, just wondering if it is the same on the west coast? I am going to be on the pct this summer, would like to listen to some talk radio, and maybe get some weather predictions.

[Joseph Reeves]

I'll throw another vote toward a Sangean am/fm/wx radio. I have the older version and it has held up well. Mine is used most often to check weather forecasts on multi-week kayak trips in order to save the battery on our hand-held VHFs for emergencies. It also allows for late night listening to all of the stations most of you can pull in during the day. On occasion we can pick up a Japanese AM station as well. Nothing like listening to Coast to Coast under a tarp in the forest.

[Blair Gentes]

Joseph,

What is the battery life like on the model you use?

On their product sheet, there is only one pocket radio with weather channels: the DT400W. Did you have the earlier version of this model?

I also love listening to coast to coast, though it is midnight by the time we get it here in the central time zone.

[Joseph Reeves]

Blair,

Battery life is very good. I don't think I've changed it in a couple of years — it accepts lithiums. Mine is an earlier model, but I recall a similar thread to this some time ago and the person who originally posted ended up buying the newer version. He had a similar experience with reception and battery life; very positive. The version I have also has an alarm and a fool proof locking switch.

Reception is a bit weak for NOAA WX without an extension on the short plug in antennae, I add a few feet of wire and hook it to a tree.

Coast to Coast comes on in southeast Alaska around 9 pm. Interesting article about the program in the Atlantic Monthly in January or February.

[Ed Barkowski]

Anyone have notes on the Sony SRF-S84?

[Dale Wambaugh]

Wow– that is tiny!

Online reviews are mostly good and many brags on distant reception. Bears a good look! Price is a little steep, but I'm CHEAP :)

[jeffrey bennett]

I am in the market and just wondering if any one else have a light wieght radio they would like to share.

[Ed Barkowski]

Ended up buying the Sony SRF-S84 and really, really like it. Tiny, great reception, incredibly long battery life (on one aaa), well-built, trusted name, etc. I'd buy another. Hiking the A.T. with it, and have about 30 days of use thus far. Grab one on eBay for about $30…

[Dale Wambaugh]

Ditto on the SRF-S84. Comes in at 2.1oz with battery and earbud headphones. It is not as small as I imagined from the photos– not that it is "big" in any stretch of the imagination: 3-1/8" tall x 1-9/16" wide and 9/16' thick (minus the pocket clip). Analog tuning has excellent discrimination, low noise on AM, can be switched mono/stereo on FM (helps weak signals), bass boost is modest, positive power switch (slides).

Paid $33.99 including shipping on 5/27 to http://myworld.ebay.com/ecbuy_shop/ (in China) and it arrived well packed 6/3. Couldn't be happier!

[jeffrey bennett]

I was already ordering some other stuff from them so I decided to try it out the County Comm GP-4L. I will post later with a small review. Thanks

[James D Buch]

Mine just arrived Monday.

Last night I had my collection of weather radios down by the river and tried them all.

Only two were able to obtain out of area NOAA weather broadcasts. My Oregon Scientific WR103, a five year old weather only model that was my best, and the DT400w AM/FM/WX.

The WR103 pulled in two out of area (Davenport IA) stations, Burlington IA and Peoria IL. The DT400w pulled in those two, and half pulled in an additional Northern IA station.

The DT400w needed either the headphones plugged in to act as an antenna or the included short wire antenna. The out of area reception was thin to none without the added antenna.

I used to own a Sony armband AM/FM/WX unit, but found the WX performance lacking when out of urban areas by 20 to 30 miles. In the same locations, the WR103 pulled in 3 or more NOAA stations.

The Sangean looks like a keeper.

[Dale Wambaugh]

You can get away with adding a wire to some radios that use the ground wire on the headphones for the antenna. What you need is a length of really small gauge insulated wire. I pulled the innards from an old Ethernet cable for mine. The trick is getting it small enough to go under the headphone plug while still allowing the headphone to make the internal contacts. Note that it is stripped where it makes contact with the jack.

This is going to work best on FM. AM typically uses a ferrite bar inside the radio– turning the radio can bring in the weaker signals. If you really want to get into DX'ing, there are all kinds of plans for making loop antennas for AM use.

The illustration is from http://www.fixup.net/tips/srfs83/srfs83.htm

You can get long wire antennas to attach to the telescoping antenna on short wave and FM radios. They roll up like a measuring tape. Some SW radios have an antenna jack, using the roll up cable with a 3.5mm mono-style plug. The roll-up arrangment is more for convenience– you can use a length of wire with the stripped end simply wrapped around the telescoping antenna and certainly lighter. I hook one end to a tree branch or between trekking poles. This makes a huge difference in SW reception with small radios.

[Jerry Adams]

I tried the http://www.countycomm.com/gp4light.html

AM/FM/SW radio with speaker. 2 AA batteries. 150 hours at 40% volume is their spec which is conservative. 5.3 ounces including NiMh batteries.

The only problem is, the Sony SRF-M37W has much better reception

When I was on the Goat Rocks about 100 miles from Portland and Seattle, the Sony received AM stations, the countycomm didn't. Also FM was better. The countycomm has shortwave which the Sony doesn't, and at night I could get some SW stations.

When I was in the mountains (not in a valley) I could get FM stations better than AM, for example NPR out of Portland. I always though AM was better far from the source.

I think the Sony is better because it has narrower bandwidth tuning. Like if I'm looking at 620 AM in Portland, with the Sony, I can hear this signal when the tuner is between about 600 and 640 KHz. With the countycomm it's about twice that. So when you're far away, you're getting a wider band of noise which swamps out the signal.

[Dale Wambaugh]

Both radios are position sensitive to AM reception, using an internal antenna. Rotating the radio can improve AM reception, so a comparative test should include that.

FM reception is via the telescoping antenna on the County Comm or the headphone ground wires on the Sony. Moving your head or the headphone cable can change the reception on the Sony while listening to weak FM stations.

The County Comm SW reception benefits from a long wire antenna clipped to the telescoping antenna.

[Jerry Adams]

The Sony – AM – when 100 miles away from source so signal is weak, you have to rotate the radio so it faces towards or away from source. If you're at right angles the reception gets much worse. And sometimes the signal fades in and out so you have to wait a while.

With the Countycomm – AM – I tuned to the same station that worked on the Sony, 1190AM, and no matter what I did it didn't come in at all – rotate radio, wait a while and try again,…

I need to do a little better test of FM.

[Bob Gross]

"because it has narrower bandwidth tuning"

Sometimes you can find it in the product specifications under FM tuning selectivity. On a really cheap product, they will not specify selectivity at all. On a really really cheap product, the vendor doesn't even understand what selectivity is and doesn't care.

–B.G.–

[Jerry Adams]

I've noticed two specs for both AM and FM

noise limit FM <= 10 uV, AM <= 1 mV/m (for countycomm and also CC Crane and Sony)

selectivity AM > 25 dB (only on the CC Crane radio)

maybe selectivity has to do with the narrowness of tuning

CC has a new pocket AM/FM radio out Nov 30 – maybe I'll get that – 4 ounces, 2 AA batteries, supposedly good AM selectivity

[Bob Gross]

"maybe selectivity has to do with the narrowness of tuning"

Sort of, yes.

If you have two FM broadcast stations, and one is at frequency 98.5 MHz and one is at 98.7 MHz, then the FM receiver with good selectivity will pick one or the other out cleanly. The FM receiver with poor selectivity is struggling to pick out either one if the opposite station signal is more powerful.

With AM, it is much more of a crapshoot.

–B.G.–

[Terry Trimble]

I have the the Sangean SR-2 am/fm radio color: yellow.

It's a pocket great radio it only weighs 1.3 oz. and is about the length of large Bic lighter only 1.5 " tall 1/2 inch wide, It's a mechanical radio that is easy to tune. . Runs on one AAA battery and has great reception. It has been discontinued but you may be able to find one.
Terry

http://www.sangean.com/products/product_spec.asp?mid=54

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