I was just reading this article about a recent simulation by NYC of a small yield nuke in Times Square.

To me, the most interesting part of the article was the suggestion by the emergency managers that radio, particularly battery-operated radio, would be the go to form of communication when power and cell towers are knocked out over a wide area.


I'm listening to my Giants in the World Series on my little portable radio right now. Down 7-2 now...

What to put in your fall out room. The battery operated radio does indeed get a mention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6U9T3R3EQg&feature=player_detailpage#t=1362

An ex surplus NATO IPK, sand bags and a shovel might be worth having as well. By pulling up the floor boards on a ground floor house and to start digging a trench. Use the earth to fill up the sand bags to cover over the IPK tarp covering the slit trench.

Loved the 'Old-fashioned battery powered radio'... ..and the Government official announcements have already previously been recorded on Vinyl 78 records.

The poor iPhone and iPad user. No inbuilt FM radios for you!

I seem to be noticing a trend. Folks don't seem to know what Vinyl or even Compact Disk is. I have even heard someone recently who didn't know what a land line telephone was. Analogue radio such as commercial FM, AM and SW might be a mystery to them as well.

I have this vision of folks attempting to contact their Internet Service provider in Bangalore or Manila whilst looking at the Mushroom cloud trying to find out why their iPad doesn't get Facebook or Twitter anymore with only an hour or two before the nuclear fallout starts raining down...

I've added a cheap amateur radio HT with FM (but not, unfortunately, AM) broadcast receive capabilities to my laptop bag -- I already had one in each BOB. It's small, got great battery life, it was an easy addition.

GP-5 DSP General Purpose Radio is a pretty good radio. Good coverage for a small radio: FM: 87 – 108 or 76 – 108 MHz; MW/ AM: 522 - 1620 (9K tuning step) or 520 – 1710 kHz (10K tuning step ); SW: 2300 – 21950 kHz;LW frequency: 150 – 522 kHz (available for 9K tuning step only). Runs on three AA batteries which can be recharged while in the radio via 5V USB. I like it.

But it's hard to beat a small AM/FM radio to drop in your kit for emergencies.

I reviewed that radio at http://forums.equipped.org/ubbthreads.ph...true#Post264506 .

Good review. That external AM antenna is great, it really helps clean up the signal and bring in a weak signal. I bought a second.
I also had a couple of the earlier GP4L radio, gave one to my brother, kept one still sealed in the environmental packaging.

I would be surprised if AM stations stayed up very long. FM has way more listeners so way more advertisers and therefore way more $ to be lost if they go down. I would bet they have way more fuel for their backup generators.

True, but AM radio works better over longer distances and so you may be more likely to hear the news you need from a station that's outside the area of the emergency.

If this HT had AM and weather radio reception it would be the ideal solution. I own an HT that does all of that (and quite a bit more) but it's a little too spendy to let it bang around in my laptop bag.

I have an mp3 player with a built in radio..works fairly well for what I need.

For major weather events AM radio is fine, Wx radio probably handles the day-day normal weather much better since it's always on weather. Peeps in tornado country will probably have a different view. I have a pretty good weather radio and I never use the weather band.

Now this portable radio looks the business, a digital high precision Software Defined Radio but is $600

CommRadio CR-1a

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYKYNCLIbqU

Wow, awesome review Chaos, I'd missed that one. I'll be picking up a GP-5 tonight!

I stock 2 solar/crank/ battery radios.

Not just for information, but entertainment as well

Thanks! I hope you enjoy it.

for the more mundane use like tornado warning, I have both a Midland W300 and Reecom weather alert (SAME) radio... I really like the Reecom, but I did not choose the more expensive model with the AM/FM capability, but would do so if had been my only radio... it runs on AAs as well as a wall plug... I like the Reecom as the alert is received as voice in addition to the alert tone

Not a direct reply to you, Les, but your comment reminded me of something.

The Emergency Alert System is supposed to provide information about disasters and other major events, but except for weather alerts, I can't recall ever hearing any stories of people getting useful info through the EAS system. I mean, it would great if your SAME-encoded weather radio, which is always "listening", would perk up and say, "Hey, here's an important message from the mayor regarding incident X! Listen up!"

I know that I haven't heard anything myself over the years, even when I was in Manhattan on 9/11 or through earthquakes in California. Actually, maybe the more major and chaotic a situation is, the less likely officials will be broadcasting official EAS messages.

In any case, seems like most useful info flows through news bureaus and are disseminated through commercial sources, hence the usefulness of a battery powered AM/FM radio.

Scanners can be useful but as many agencies go to more sophisticated digital systems, and even encrypted systems, scanners seem less useful in many areas without spending a lot of money.

That's true, especially at night when AM propagates farther. And when tuning a high power, clear channel AM station.

When I lived in Irvine, California, the city had its own low power FM broadcast capability. I heard it put to use one time, when a wildfire was headed towards the edge of the city. That's the only city I have heard of with its own broadcast capability (as opposed to going through commercial stations through the EAS). I'm not sure if the transmitter was at city hall or perhaps up on the nearby hills, but I thought that was a great resource for residents.

I've got something like this in both car trunks and the home kit.

I store this one from Radio Shack. It's about as simple as you can possibly get and works fine. It's an inexpensive "better than nothing" radio.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3705831

The RadioShack AM/FM Pocket radio and the Kaito AM/FM radio sold by CountyComm remind me of the "transistor" radio I had as a kid back in the '60's -- very simple and fairly trouble-free. Pretty much the same $ ballpark but considering inflation, the current crop are seriously inexpensive. As I recall, mine didn't have FM, AM only -- different times...

I've got an Eton Scorpian sitting in my kit. Nothing fancy, but enough rubber armor to ensure it survives getting bounced around. It uses a very low power (3x 2/3AAA)cordless phone battery pack. Building a 3x AA eneloop or other LSD rechargable pack would be a plug and play solution to the low battery capacity.

Oh no! I found this flavor of the GP-5 at Amazon which was the gateway drug to this Yaesu VX-8R for which I must now fight clicking the 'order' button...! Lots of accessories too.

I can't believe you guys are making me buy this equipment.

Glock-A-Roo: At the same price point as the Yaesu VX-8R I would recommend instead the Kenwood TH-F6A. It's dramatically easier to use/operate, and has a wider wideband receive (I believe it's actually the widest wideband receive available in any HT). It's even a touch smaller (in width and height, it is a touch deeper). Mine has been rock solid.

No affiliation.

My application would be for a radio for use at home but that could instantly be dropped into a BOB and used hard in the field. Can the Kenwood stand up to the same punishment? And, can both do scanning work about the same? In a crisis I think being able to scan efficiently is valuable.

I love the scan functions on my Kenwood. They're both powerful and very easy to use. The unit is very rugged. The Yaesu is rated for limited immersion, which the Kenwood is not.

I use my Kenwood for emergency communications exercises in the field and it's never let me down.

I hear good things about the Sony ICF-S10MK2 Pocket AM/FM Radio from hams. It's very cheap, and apparently you can pull in far away stations. A lot of bang for the buck.

http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/7384

Great article about the small radio Sony makes for the US prison system: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-ipod-of-prison?currentPage=all

The non-prison version of this radio is $15 on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00006JQ06/ref=...=I1HFQPSKGTLUNG

It is supposed to be incredibly durable, runs 100-150 hours on a single AA battery, and has amazing reception.
-Blast

Fascinating. I had no idea that manufacturers make prison-specific models.

Can you control the SAME alerts? I had a radio on my night stand but was woken up too many time to Amber alerts. Not that I'm saying I don't care about someones Amber alert but at home when I'm sleeping I'm not going to be anywhere to spot a getaway vehicle. I'd prefer those to be filtered out in that instance but still get them on the vehicle radios.

My SAME weather radio allows me to receive only the alerts I want. In other words, not only do you get to specify the region, you also choose "flooding warning" vs "tornado warning," etc. You can turn off Amber alerts for sure.

It seems like all SAME weather radio should offer this functionality, otherwise it's going to be beeping all the time. Perhaps check your manual?

LOL -- after reading this post I started looking at Sony AM/FM pocket radios and found the Sony ICF-S10MK2 Pocket AM/FM Radio -- duh!! I have that radio in the truck's survival kit, batteries removed. Good radio, I won't say bombproof, but close to it. The 1xAA non-prison radio Blast linked to gets more time on a single battery but it's using a small headset (3.6mWx2) rather than a speaker (100mW). With a headset I'd expect the battery life to significantly increase.
FWIW

Interesting. I have two Oregon Scientific portable weather radios with SAME and neither one lets you select which type of alert you can hear. It makes sense, though, for people who know what they're doing.

Mine is from Radio Shack. You can download the manual from most manufacturers these days. I wouldn't get a weather radio that doesn't give you an option. It will wake you up in the middle of the night for things that may have little to do with you.

Mine was pre-SAME so the high number of alerts basically made it useless so I need to replace it.
Come to think of it my pro-97 will display the SAME text, I wonder if it can filter.

i'm with Bingley. i've tried a number of radios (am, fm, shortwave) over the last 30 years here in the wilderness but been most happy with the cheap & simple $10 sony ICF-S10MK2

I liked the idea of a radio for my GHB that would run on a single AA battery so I dropped by the local Fry's and found the Sony SRF-59 AM/FM Radio which is the non-prison version. The radio works fine with a strong AM station in local, but not-so-much for any FM station I could find in "Local" mode. Switching to DX mode the FM was pretty good for a very simple radio. I see no reason to use local unless you are simply too close to the transmitter. The instructions recommend a 1.5V alkaline but I tested it with a NiMH rechargeable battery and it worked fine. The headset that came in the plastic package used up too much real estate for my GHB so I replaced it with Sony lightweight earbuds.

That said, I still prefer the audio from my 2xAA Sony ICF-S10Mk2. It has a real antenna rather than using the headset cord for FM, but you still need a headset to get stereo cuz it only has one speaker. Still for a radio to use while walking, one that uses the headset cord may be preferable since the telescoping antenna doesn't work well in your pocket. Tradeoffs.

I have a little Sony SRF-M37W that I picked up as a refurbished unit at a factory outlet fixe or six years back. I think I only paid about $20 or 30 for it, but I got it because it runs off a single AAA battery and receives NOAA Weather band in addition to AM/FM.

It appears to now be a discontinued model, but there seem to be quite a few around on ebay for good prices.

It has ridden around in my computer bag since I bought it, and it still does its job just fine.

A question that's been in the back of my mind for a long time is what happened to 9V transistor radios? My first radio as a child was a small, red AM-only Radio Shack radio that ran on a 9V battery. Listened to a lot of baseball games on it.

Did 9V radios disappear because voltage boosting circuitry is so cheap and common now? Or do the components just require less voltage than they used to?

I suspect it's because voltage boosting circuits became easier and cheaper to install. The components are smaller and run from a lower voltage so no need to boost the voltage. Also, AA and AAA batteries are ubiquitous and much less expensive than 9V batteries. And nobody likes them.

For myself, I have a couple spare 9V batteries for a specific piece of equipment (cable tracer) that I use only very rarely, but otherwise those batteries are out of my life.

...just to get the Subject line back to lowly battery operated radios rather than dinosaurs ...

The components are smaller and run from a lower voltage so no need to boost the voltage.
Same as your computer, way back when you had simple calculators with TTL gates they ran up to 15V. Then CMOS technology runs at 5. Then you compact the down to modern stuff at 3.3v and even lower in cpu cores.

I just was looking at some radios like that. One of my concerns with the hand crank/ solar/ etc radio types is durability. Also, how well do they work?

The Eton I have is solidly-built and works well, if a bit fiddly to tune. I haven't taken it into the field and beat on it though.

Not a lowly battery operated radio, but the Kaito KA600 is a pretty decent radio. Good FM/AM/NOAA reception and it covers a lot of short wave (2.3KHz-23 KHz).

Power options include:
1. Rechargeable battery pack,
2. Standard AA batteries (I use NiMH rechargeable batteries),
3. Solar (power radio and recharge battery pack),
4. Hand crank,
5. USB,
6. 120 Hz AC

Mine doesn't get much use, too many radios

Not affiliated.

I have a Kaito KA200 pocket AM/FM radio. It is about the size of a pack of cards and has a speaker and headset jack. It also runs on a single AAA battery and so does my EDC flashlight (Fenix E01) and my larger three AAA's LED flashlight (Nebo 5581 220 Lumen Redline Tactical Flashlight Strobe S.O.S ). I use lithium batteries in all of them.

I keep the Kaito in my Go Bag. It was comforting to have it when I was stuck in a hotel in Boston during hurricane Sandy.

Here in San Diego the official emergency radio station is on AM. We don't have much severe weather so the alert stations aren't that useful. However, they are now being used for more non-weather emergency alerts so it would be nice if the Kaito also had that feature. Still, for me, the Kaito is a great emergency radio.

I just remembered, a couple of weeks ago, I was walking the mall in Washington DC when I remembered I had the Kaito in my backpack and I pulled it out to listen to the Chargers football game. Handy.

nice. will order one to try. thnx Treeseeker.

Was surfing Kaito's website and started looking at Tecsun radios which they also market. Down the page you'll find the Tecsun PL360 which is the County Comm GP5DSP. If you check the reviews for this radio on EHam reviews for the Tecsun PL360 there are a few very good reviews which give it a 5/5 rating.

I've started using the GP5 a bit more (wear a headset for FM stereo) and found I really like this radio. For traveling the ETM function will quickly scan through all the stations so that when you "tune" the radio it simply jumps from one station to the next rather than checking out the noise between stations. For AM the 2.5" ferrite antenna that plugs into the top of the radio can be turned in any direction to bring in weaker AM stations.

The radio uses the Silicon Labs si4734 digital signal processing chip which is why there is so much functionality in such a small package. More about the chip HERE, but suffice to say that it is the radio -- minus the antennas, control buttons, batteries, speaker...

Eton radios seem to be the mid priced standard for portable crank and /or solar radios...Some come with a usb port for charging your phone

On a tangent note, I just found out that I can run me Eton FR100 (scorpian) off of a usb port. This means 1 charger can run most of my electronics.

www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B003059FAI

moving over to solar/crank radios that can charge a phone or with a usb for gear charging. Slowly.

get one with a cord; cranking usually provides 3-5 mins of radio time

Probably a dumb question, but what does HT mean? In reference to the HT comment on page 1!

I believe it's either "Handheld Transceiver" or "Handy-Talky" (two names for the same thing).

Makes sense! Thanks

HT is amateur radio slang for handy talkie.