Emergency Weather Radios

I just bought the Kaito ka500L. It’s unbelievably cheaply built and I wouldn’t get another. It looks great on paper. The L suffix is for “Long Lasting”. Basically it’s a ka500 with a 18650 battery for “longer lasting” LOL. They beefed up the solar panel as well which means instead of some marginal POS that doesn’t tread water, it will very slowly charge. I left mine in the window and it charged up from 3.702 volts to 3.76 volts in a couple of cloudy days. Which, by way of reference, is less than if you turn the crank handle 20 times. Regardless, at $50 it’s a very cheaply build product, the knob to select AM/FM/SW is poorly designed in that the choices are so close together that the cheap little POS plastic knob they use makes choosing channels a chore. The first one I got didn’t have the AM working, Kaito customer service was supurb and they quickly traded that one for one that was working. The builtin light is also a piece of crap even when compared to the Midland ER200.

My thought is if you need a cheap radio, buy a cheap one, the Kaito KA500L isn’t “cheap” although it straddles the line on price between cheap and not cheap. The Tecsun PL880 (expensive) also has a 18650 battery (but no crank or no solar etc etc) and is in my view is worth the extra money ($100 more so $59 vs $159) if you want a solid SHTF radio. At least you know it will work when you pull it out at a critical moment when it’s most needed.

The portables I have run on AA’s in the radio or a 6 volt wall wart. Well they run just fine on 5 volts so I took one of those Folomov A1 chargers I think, the one with the magnetic doohicky’s that stick to the battery, cut a USB cord off an old mouse, cut a plug off an old wall wart, little solder and heat shrink later, custom cable that will run my radios off any Li-Ion cell. I use high cap 26650’s for lots of runtime.

Side note, SW bands normally start at 1.8mhz and continue to 30mhz.

Thanks for the heads up I backed away from that Kaito brand. The good reviews seemed to be fake or from people who reviewed it by what it’s supposed to do not what it does.

If you have time could I get a picture of this invention?

Thanks

i have a decent one by lacrosse (though some of their other stuff is junk)
it probably isn;t available now
runs on 3 AA batteries

wle

I purchased this Midland ER200 NOAA Weather radio several years ago. It’s a very nice little “do all” portable radio.

Runs on a replicable 18650 battery

That one was on my list I seems nice . If the Sangean MMR-88 is a dud I might get it.

Thanks

I paid $27.69 for the ER200 a couple years back. It’s worth that and it’s a nice little radio. Not worth $60. You can’t simply drop a regular 18650 battery into it, there is a special connector which must be on the battery, and that connector is difficult to insert into the mating part on the radio without needlenose pliers. I think that detracts a lot, if you pull the radio out when you need it most (say the power is out) and the battery isn’t connected or needs to be traded out, you need one with a connector soldered on already and even then you’ll be monkeyf**ing around in the dark with it for a bit. I wish they had just left the battery as a 18650 (no connector). Buying a spare battery for it is expensive.

To their credit, Midland makes that process look easy (bottom link below), but trust me, even a small child’s fingers won’t fit in there. Old arthritic fingers even less so. Midlands list price for that battery is and insane $25. If you had the connector fitting I suppose you would make it yourself.

https://midlandusa.com/product/batt26l-rechargeable-battery/

https://midlandusa.staging.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/ER200-Battery-Installation-Instructions.pdf

Nothing fancy. This is the second one I made, kinda crude but functional. The other one is buried in my bag. I tried to use the Xtar PB2 charger/power bank but the radio doesn’t pull enough current to keep the PB2 on. It also works with one of those Li-100 chargers/power banks but it is a bit bulkier. The Folomov charging cable just fits in my bag better. Just had to make sure I had the polarity right on the plug for the radio. This radio requires center negative, but I can change the polarity of the plug by swapping the magnetic connections on the battery.

The one Amazon review I read stated that the MMR-88 is a much better product than Midland ER200/ER210.

This. :arrow_upper_right:

When I see a simple radio that includes a flashlight, powerbank function, bluetoof connectivity to play t00nz from your phone, other idiotic crap, that screams to me that the radio in general is garbage, and they add all that other garbage to “add value”.

What’s sad is that people buy into it… and buy it.

If anyone cares, my “weather radio” is my scanner tuned with the NOAA freqs.

Miss the actual voice recordings, as the robots just sound creepy. “Uncanny valley”, and all…

[quote=toddcshoe]

Nothing fancy. This is the second one I made, kinda crude but functional. The other one is buried in my bag. I tried to use the Xtar PB2 charger/power bank but the radio doesn’t pull enough current to keep the PB2 on. It also works with one of those Li-100 chargers/power banks but it is a bit bulkier. The Folomov charging cable just fits in my bag better. Just had to make sure I had the polarity right on the plug for the radio. This radio requires center negative, but I can change the polarity of the plug by swapping the magnetic connections on the battery.

Great, now I understand. I have all of this
Thanks!

If you don’t care about AM radio I’d probably recommend a Baofeng UV-5R for ~$25. You can specifically enter any frequency, including all of the weather channels, plus the standard FM radio frequencies. Even comes with a (poor) flashlight. :slight_smile: Just program it to prevent it from transmitting if it’s not legal in your area.

I have 2 of those but I haven’t used them for anything other than P to P communicating.

So do you have to manually enter a frequency? Or can you also scan?

I don’t think these scan but could be wrong…

They can scan fairly slowly, or you can manually enter the frequency. Or both— you could type in 160.000 MHz and then scan from there to find the weather channels.

If you’re in a fixed area, you can just find the one which gives the clearest signal, and keep only that one active.

Eg, by me, I can clearly pick up 162.550MHz (Rockville Center?), but on occasion pick up one that’s in Connecticut somewhere. Spotty reception, so I’d just leave it on “my” station. Wx up there could be drastically different than for my area anyway, so…

Only if you’re traveling would you need to scan anything. And even then, it’s only 7 channels.

I had all 7 in my scanner, and just “enabled” 162.550. I kept them in bank 20, exclusive just for wx stations.

+1
Very useful to have an analog two-way radio, when you really need it.
I am not a lawyer but I heard, when the need arises, you could transmit in case of emergency.