Weather Station Hardware > Weather Radios

Radio Shack (Realistic brand) weather radios from the 1980s

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cpufrost:
Yeah they never really come back in their old form unfortunately.

Also for nostalgic electronic geeks:  Lafayette and Heathkit! :-D

Out of all my Heathkits the only thing that works fully is a 2410 HF frequency counter I built in 1986.  It hasn't been powered on in years but I'm sure it still works.  I do miss the HP counters with nixies.  I swear walls of nixies with the numbers moving in and out could hypnotize one who spent countless hours monitoring things.  Now we have to deal with a similar effect that's obnoxious with smart phone cameras!  Focus hunting!

Garth Bock:
My old school Radio Shack weather monitors. The left one has an outdoor sensor and is from 2007. The right one is from the late 80's and is an indoor temp/ barometer. Both still working fine.

cpufrost:
That reminds me, I remember the Micronta indoor outdoor electronic thermometer from the 80s.

This one:

https://www.ebay.com/c/1523681822

I almost got one but was OK with my Springfield Palisades. :-)

sadivnik:
Here I go reviving an old thread again -- but I'm a uuuuge fan of most things Radio Shack* & miss it more every day! (for instance, it's about impossible now in the US to get a quality outdoor yagi directional analog FM radio antenna; something I really wish I hadn't put off now!)

My two main weather radios are the model 12-141[https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/radioshack_realistic_desktop_weather_receiver_12_141.html]
&
12-151a [https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/realistic_12_151_a12151.html].

Both of these were bought at local 2nd hand shops for $1 or 2 and work great now as they did .. 35 or 40 years ago when they were new & I was still a juvenile delinquent! One's in my kitchen & one's in my office.

I also had the cube; not the nice 'simulated walnut plastic' one but the gray plastic one (I was poor college student), bought new ca. 1990, still somewhere in storage (since 2002).

A few years ago when I moved back after many years to where I could use a weather radio again I bought the midland wr-120ez - what a waste of $40; I never did get it to work for more than a day before it drained the battery. Total junk and a shame to the name of a great old radio mark. But there was no Radio Shack to get the Cube at (sniff, tears).

I do miss the old days before the WR 'readers' were robots though!

I always say RS stuff was great - and sometimes awful - because it seemed like whatever they made they made apparently without looking at what the competitors made, like in a vacuum or on another planet (or the soviet block).

So sometimes they were able to not get stuck on the same recurring problems/design flaws that everybody else copied, but other times (less often) you'd wonder what the hell was wrong with their logic!

I built numerous hi-fi speaker sets from scratch with RS parts - some way too big for my chevette (it was green) (or any other car the 50-something me now says!). I bought it all - woofers & tweeters, crossovers, grill fabric, etc. right down to the solder there - even their how-to speakers book!

Their 1980s car stereos were pretty OK for the money, too. Not to mention 'Optimus' hi-fi stuff. Man!

*But it was so annoying when you'd try to buy one small thing at radio shack, like a flashlight bulb or a battery, and they'd want your phone, address and all that for the receipt - criminy what a hassle! (I see this is mentioned above too so I'm not the only one - but I'd suffer the inconvenience, man would I ever, to have RS back again!)

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