What is a good radio to pickup world wide news & emergency channels? The radio must have powerful antenna.

I am thinking of Grundig. Does anyone have good alternative radio?

As far as "emergency" channels go, I am thinking a good scanner, with a search feature. Mine, a 1000 channel model from Radio Shack, works great. Won't pick up regular am/fm tho...

What do people think of the grundig? I won't be using the crank feature unless it really hits the fan.

Dave

I'm tempted by this $40 radio. It picks up AM / FM, all 40 CB channels, VHG marine band, VHF aircraft band, NOAA weather broadcasts, TV sound from VHF stations 2-13 plus foreign broadcasts from around the world

I also like this radio along with this antenna from County Comm.

-Blast

Grundig was, at one time, a very hi-end consumer radio manufacturer. I don;t know if they're still hi-end, but their retail prices wouldn;t suggest so (IF that means anything). I've had at least one Grundig radio, maybe two through the years.

The real market (IF there is a SW market anymore) has pretty much been taken over by Eton / Grundig, Sangean, ICOM, Kaito, and Yaesu.

I have a Sangean ATS-505 AM/FM Longwave/Shortwave that's pretty nice and yet compact. I think it sold for a little over $100 during Christmas 2006.

The way to go now though, I would think, is a portable XM satellite radio, with a modest but decent LW/SW as backup.

I've been a big fan of AM radio for many years, if not decades. As long as they're broadcasting, I get my fill of pol....ooops, almost said the P-word!!!!!!, I mean soci.....oooops, almost said the S-word, I mean....well, I like to listen to it. In a traumatized society like one day may happen, satellite and SW would be better alternatives to AM because world news would be so important (and you would still be able to get any local AM broadcasting).

I've been looking for a long time for something small like this but with the clock set by the nist time service and maybe noaa bands. I'd like to be able to pull it out on camping trips and not have to set the clock which is why I want the nist function.

IMO the Sony 7600 is a better receiver due to the phase lock stability in the receiver. A lot of receivers drift in frequency and you're always re-tuning. The Sony 7600 and other Sony receivers with PLL tech are a much better although more pricey option in a receiver. $.02

That is a good price for that radio. Most places have it listed at 10.00 more.

Dave

I've been wondering this as well...

I was looking at getting an Icom r5 unblocked. Anyone here had experience with this radio?

Very compact, can get pretty much any freq (from what I read), and from the yahoo group devoted to this model, they all seem to love it.

Its what i was looking at getting for a radio...

Kris

I would not bother to buy any radios that cost more than $40 or so at this point.

Here's why.

1. Emergency communications are going Digital & Trunked. Here in Bucks County, we're on an APCO-25 Digital Radio system, running on 500 Mhz. This system (which sucks eggs, by the way) requires a digital scanner to pick up the signals, and many places are going with encrypted digital comms. Trunked systems are very, very common.

2. Terrestrial Television is going Digital on Feb 19th 2008, and your TV audio receivers will be useless.

3. Shortwave radio is mostly used for COTHEN and similar network traffic, but for serious communications, satellite Phones and data networks are the favored tool.

4. Weather Radio and some other VHF traffic will still be there (NY City is still on a conventional, analog, VHF system for Fire Department and Police Department traffic) but all in all, for the rest of the US and Canada, it's going Digital, and quickly.

The new 700 Mhz systems will be totally different from current systems, and those will be going online soon too.