Weather radio

we have a radio shack unit which i sometimes forget to turn on. last week week had a terrible storm come thru delaware seashore at 3:30 in the morning, and if i would have had it on i probably wouldn't have lost my awning. my bad

Winger Christmas in July was yesterday :).

Hey, if you send me a private message I can help you with that Amazon Wish list.. I recently got a new Ham Radio.. FOR FREE off amazon, In fact I wound up with about 9 bucks worth of FREE left over.. Just added 25 more Free dollars to my Amazon account..

Thanks for the help all. I have added a couple of them to my Amazon wish list....Christmas is coming!

Ok, first I do not think the radio itself makes all that much difference.. Though it can.

What matters is the antenna.. proper length is 18 or 36" (there are some other possible lengths as well) as the wave length (300/162) is just under 2 meters or right around 2 yards.

The BEST, antennsa however are external.. So if your radio has the ability to use an external antenna, Put one ON THE ROOF, of the RV (or on the ladder or on the arm of your Winegard) use a design that either includes it's own ground plane (Radial elements that stick out) or needs no ground plane

(You can find several antennas on the following Link, these are designed for a nearby ham band (144-148 MHZ) but will usually work with Weather band (162) though shortening them to the limit of their stop may help. (do not cut, use adjustment)

MFJ Enterprises 2 meter antennas

These antennas use 52 OHM coax NOT RG-59/RG-6 but RG-58 or several other numbers.

If you have a unit with a FIXED antenna. like I do, you can bring the coax in then fix a connector as follows... Solder a wire to the center pin, wrap twice around the "finger" style antenna, and solder the other end to the body/shield.

It works by inductive coupling.

RVhiker wrote:
I bought this weather radio (Midland WR-300) about four years ago and it is working well for us. I second the general comments of sdianel (above) about what the features of a weather radio should be. My WR300 does have an exterior antenna input, though I have never used it.

X2
It works on 12VDC as well. I power ours direct from the batteries. I just need to program the best station each time we move. I'll be adding an external antenna this off season.

First Alert

We bought one of these after moving to Ohio and it has worked very well. I would suggest getting an AC charger also. We leave it on all the time at home and take it with us when we head out in the Minnie.

> shuts itself off

Yeah. I had a Midland unit years ago that didn't shut off. It went off while we were away and babbled all weekend. The neighbors loved it.

I will second the Reecom. We use it at home and one big positive, it shuts itself off after it give the warning.

We use the RADIO SHACK 12-260 model here, I went with the simple type ones as if you get the ones that has programmed spots for different counties and states then you have to keep programming those in as you move around the country side.

Mine does a channel scan when you first turn it on and stops on the active channel... Another problem is you don't always know what county you are in so what you are listening to may be many any miels away haha

I wired mine up with a radio shack DC AUTO ADAPTER plug and matched the right plug for the WX RADIO. This unit runs off 6VDC

This allows me to remove the batteries and plug this into my 12VDC Sockets in my trailer.

I got mine several years back when Radio Shack was alive and going strong. Don't know if you can still order these from AMAZON or not...



Roy Ken

Weather radios are a good idea to take camping and to keep around the house. Be sure to buy a good one, if the receiver can't pick up the station broadcasting then the radio will do you no good. A radio with a external antenna jack would be a good idea to help receive that emergency broadcast when out boon-docking.