Emergency Weather Radios

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.

I want to get something better but has to be dirt cheap so if we leave it at the beach, I wont care to drive back an hour to get it. That is why I’m watching this thread. I was looking at the Sangean MMR-88, but at 80 bucks from Amazon.ca, it’s too expensive to lose or damage.
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I have one of those old Radio Scrap crank radios i bought for 20 bucks in the early 2000’s. It goes with us on outings but the chargeable ni-cad went dead a long time ago. And annoyingly, eats up batteries very quickly.

It has a tiny ni-cad pack but it also has slots to takes AA batteries. And here is a question……I wonder if I replace the recharge pack by driving (cranking) the drop in batteries? I have a ton of ni-meh batteries I can put in there. But will I cause any damage to the electronics or the batteries? The are going to be in series. I’m assuming that the crank is going to put out enough voltage to actually charge the batteries….maybe?

https://www.amazon.com/Grundig-FR200-Emergency-Discontinued-Manufacturer/dp/B000083CUA

Anyone fool around with one of these?

I have an FR200. Pulls in stations well but rather poor sound quality. No WB channels preset. Good for listening to a weather/news report bad for music.

Agree.

It’s just background music when sitting at the beach or a picnic. Still works fine, but the crank is now useless because of the dead pack.

Edit….

The Eton is getting some good reviews….from outside Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Eton-Emergency-Bluetooth-Smartphone-FRX5BT/dp/B01K6OCSI6/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=eton+emergency+radio&qid=1551486236&s=gateway&sr=8-4

These are hard to beat for the money. Clear and crisp sound and 2x AA battery usage. For an emergency weather radio this little jewel locks on to your local NOAA station with ease. Great little radio on AM & FM also. Picked this one up prior to past hurricane season.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IKU3PFE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

ETA: The reviews aren’t that great, but I have to disagree. Guess I got a good one. ymmv