Saturday, February 27, 2010

Radio Shack has an interesting Weather Radio with AM/FM for Skywarn folks.

Since Jackson County has a grant to get a 75% rebate on the purchase of a new weather radio with SAME technology, it was not hard to say "yes".

The radio has an amazing additional feature. It's a scanner for two-meter and 440 mHz Skywarn channels, programmable. That's 20 channels for the local Skywarn enthusiast.

The radio specifications list .3 microvolt for both the weather radio and Skywarn band. That's not great sensitivity but locally it works to hear the local Skywarn repeaters and the County NWS transmitter, with the telescoping antenna collapsed and folded into storage.

Reading the reviews on the Radio Shack site, some complaints are:

low sensitivity
can't program a local Skywarn channel
no balance in audio between bands

One EXCELLENT feature is the BNC antenna adapter that comes with the radio. This makes having an outside antenna to improve reception of both weather and amateur radio signals.

Overall, this is a good unit, especially if you live in Jackson County, OK and are involved in the Skywarn Program.

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