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Weather Station Hardware => Weather Radios => Topic started by: WXman on March 08, 2012, 08:51:50 AM
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Bought 3 Midland desktop radios, and 1 has died already.
Going to replace it with a portable/desktop unit, but am not going to buy Midland this time.
I'm looking at the Chaney 8525 and the Oregon Scientific WR601. Can anyone offer advice on which radio to go with? Price is the same..
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I happened to be at Walmart yesterday (Chinamart) and I saw that they are selling the Chaney 8550 which I think is almost identical to the 8525, and the price was under $30 bucks and I would'nt have to pay shipping to an online vendor and wait. \:D/ So I bagged one up.
NICE radio for the money! Ease of use is excellent. Features seem really good. I haven't had an alert for my area today so can't talk about the warning aspect of the radio yet.
Things I'd like to see: Refer to NOAA towers by frequency, and not by station. I don't give a furry rat's tail what "channel" comes in most clearly. The NWS doesn't label towers by channels. Why should the radio in the user's hand? Instead.. the frequency of the station the radio is tuning into should be what you see on the screen. That way you can choose the proper tower for your area. I can receive multiple "channels" from my house, but only 2 of them will broadcast warnings for me. The frequency is what matters.
There is some static noise also. The audio comes in clear and never breaks up, but there is a lot of static type noise coming through the speaker all the time. What's up with that?
Otherwise, so far I'm very happy with the radio and it is perfect in every way for my needs. Great value.
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Haven't used the Chaney, but I do have an Oregon WR102 which I don't like because it is way too easy to change "counties" by just touching a button accidentally (plus I need the manual everytime I want to use it)
The Midland HH54VP2 has a neat "HOME/TRAVEL" function that may be useful if you ever travel or want to quickly switch to "all county" monitoring. I just ordered one of these two days ago - so I can't review it yet.
For a desktop radio - I highly recommend the Reecom R1630C
http://www.reecominc.com/r1630.htm
I agree with listing frequencies instead of channel numbers - some radios list them as the original weather channel number and others list them in numerical order (two different things)
162.400 WX 2 Numerical Channel # 1
162.425 WX 4 Numerical Channel # 2
162.450 WX 5 Numerical Channel # 3
162.475 WX 3 Numerical Channel # 4
162.500 WX 6 Numerical Channel # 5
162.525 WX 7 Numerical Channel # 6
162.550 WX 1 Numerical Channel # 7
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Haven't used the Chaney, but I do have an Oregon WR102 which I don't like because it is way too easy to change "counties" by just touching a button accidentally (plus I need the manual everytime I want to use it)
The Midland HH54VP2 has a neat "HOME/TRAVEL" function that may be useful if you ever travel or want to quickly switch to "all county" monitoring. I just ordered one of these two days ago - so I can't review it yet.
For a desktop radio - I highly recommend the Reecom R1630C
http://www.reecominc.com/r1630.htm
I agree with listing frequencies instead of channel numbers - some radios list them as the original weather channel number and others list them in numerical order (two different things)
162.400 WX 2 Numerical Channel # 1
162.425 WX 4 Numerical Channel # 2
162.450 WX 5 Numerical Channel # 3
162.475 WX 3 Numerical Channel # 4
162.500 WX 6 Numerical Channel # 5
162.525 WX 7 Numerical Channel # 6
162.550 WX 1 Numerical Channel # 7
I have a R-1650. While it is great radio, after reading the way 'customer care' from Reecom treats their customers on the Amazon comments section, I cannot in good faith ever recommend a product made by them again.
I therefore purchased a second radio for the home. This time I got a Sangean CL-100.