weather radio

[thoms]

looking for a portable weather radio with noaa and am/fm bands
saw some with hand crank charging and batteries
anyone ever use any of these on the road?
thanks in advance

[thoms]

thanks for all the great info
will check out a few of them on line
thanks again

[RoyB]

janstey58 wrote:
My NOAA app on my smart phone cost me zilch, and works great.

I'm going to have to try that here... Carry my phone on my belt loop all the time... It plays my BROADCASTIFY Police/Rescue squad Radio channels all the time. It is playing country music now haha...

I don't know how the NOAA APP works but since the phone knows where you are all the time I suspect it will adjust the NOAA ALERTS accordingly...

Roy Ken

[janstey58]

My NOAA app on my smart phone cost me zilch, and works great.

[rrupert]

I have a Midland WR-300 that has worked very well for me.

[RoyB]

One of my local friends got one of those KAITO KA500 Voyager Emergency Radio's Has all kinds of features include multi power sources including hand crank, AM/FM/SW radio, nice rugged case, pull up antenna, Weather ALert mode etc...

Said it cost around $45 from AMAZON...

The only bad thing he said it was very weak on picking up our closest WX Broadcast station which is about 40 miles away in Manassas VA...

He brought it over here for me to look at it...

The only place I could get it to pick up the WX BROADCAST was outside in one corner of my back yard.

I have a Midland WR120 WX Radio (WALMART) sitting on my radio console area with same looking pull up antenna and it picks up the WX Channels just fine - full quieting... I also have one of those C CRANE pocket radios that picks up AM/FM and WX Channels and it has a speaker cable pugged in and uses that for an antenna... In my shirt pocket with the speaker cable hanging out plugged into one of those ILUV great sounding small pocket speakers work great walking around inside my house...

I don't know if that KA500 my friend got was just a bad unit or not. It looks great and comes in multiple colors. This one was yellow... Very rugged looking but doesn't work very good on the WX channels. Works good on FM however... I think he is returning it...


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Roy Ken

[wa8yxm]

rk911 wrote:
if it were me i’d get one that...

- operates on both AC and battery power
- allows the user to connect an externally mounted antenna to increase range.

Ditto on that especially the external antrenna,.

I have several radios that can do Weather here (2 that do) One has an outside antenna (A 2 meter ham antenna) and is much much more "Senistive" (Has better range) than the pocket model. (The other is a pocket model) both run on either 12 volt house power or shore power.

NOTE: I would not go for the AM/FM/Weather because many of them do not "Alert" They will RECEIVER weather OR AM/FM but not both at the same time.

My "Alert" radio (the good one) does AM and FM on ham bands but every 5 seconds there is a "Blip" in the receive as it pops over to check for alert tones on the Weather (They last six seconds you see) This would be annoying if I were listening to something.. but since I set that half of the radio (Two radios in one box) to Scan.. It just restarts the scan so I can see if anything else is interesting.

Then if I want to listen/talk I use the other side.. Works great.

Also a VHF/UHF ham radio (receive at least they make Receive only) you can monitor the weather net (Skywarn) near you and have even more warning.

Take a class, get a license, then take a Skywarn class for the MOST warning.

[HannahFelly]

C CRANE are the best, I have the CC2BE and wouldn't change it for the world. Found it here, you can compare a few options too if it's out of your budget or you seek other specs. https://www.optimainstitute.com/weather/weather-radio.html
It doesn't hurt to compare more options either. Mildand is another company I had experience with in the past and was quite satisfied with, but can't say anything from personal experience with their newer models.

[steveh27]

I use my hand held marine radio which has a number of NOAA weather stations programmed in.

[MarkTwain]

RoyB wrote:
I like the C CRANE radios... They are kinda expensive sometimes...
Check them out online

These are very high quality radios and very sensitive... Great receptions of NOAA stations etc,,,

Roy Ken

C Crane !!!!! Great tech support in addition:)

[ramyankee]

RoyB wrote:
I like the C CRANE radios... They are kinda expensive sometimes...
Check them out online

These are very high quality radios and very sensitive... Great receptions of NOAA stations etc,,,

Roy Ken

Also a YES to CCRANE. Some pretty good products.

[RoyB]

I like the C CRANE radios... They are kinda expensive sometimes...
Check them out online

These are very high quality radios and very sensitive... Great receptions of NOAA stations etc,,,

Roy Ken

[STBRetired]

Have weather radio with batteries and hand crank. Works fairly well. Usually picks up 3 or 4 different weather stations. Will also recharge USB devices but takes a LOT of cranking to charge up an iPhone. Hand crank feature would be handy in case of lengthy power outage so you don't need to run genny with potentially limited fuel availablilty just to keep your phone charged.

[rk911]

if it were me i’d get one that...

- operates on both AC and battery power
- allows the user to connect an externally mounted antenna to increase range.