Emergency radio? Which one?

Get those CCrane radios fixed... They aren't that hard to repair. No need to buy anything new.

 

I bought this one Amazon 6 months ago and would speak highly of it. It has a multitude of features and an integrated 2000mAh battery that can be charged with a usb c cable. It is about 5"x1"x3" and weighs about 5 ounces. Ours cost $15 but now they cost $20

Amazon.com: Rysamton Portable AM/FM Radio, Digital Radio Recorder, Bluetooth 5.0 Speaker, Alarm & Sleep Function, 12/24H Time Display (Yellow Green) : Electronics

 

So, what is an emergency radio?

Is it am/fm that also gets the NOAA weather broadcast. In my area, NOAA disappeared three or more years ago.

So, a 1, 2, 3 list of musthaves for emergency radios is important.

Right now all I have is a 1980s era Radio Shack pocket transistor and the car radios

 

Last time I had AM and FM radio in my car, I could not get much signal from any station from my driveway. So, a small portable AM/FM radio will work better in an area where there aren't any radio broadcasting? I guess, shortwave radio travel very long distance and I maybe able to catch a broadcast from China... but what use in Emergency?

 

I don't like the sound of that. So far, everywhere I've lived has been within the coverage range of some NOAA Weather Radio transmitter. Not necessarily in great-reception range, but in some kinda range.

That's why I'd say to make sure any candidate radio actually has a feature to timestamp and log the regular test transmissions. I have needed that, in order to be sure I've located my receiver where it can receive well enough.

I have an old Midland, must have had it close to 20 years. Does everything it's s'posed to do, correctly.

Before that, I had an Oregon Scientific that looked swell in the catalog, nice sleek alarm clock radio with S.A.M.E. functionality, but the rat-blasted thing doesn't indicate or log the test transmissions, so I can't rely on it for alerts.

I also sent that one in for a firmware update at one point, because there was something it reliably did wrong (I forget exactly what), and it came back reliably doing something else wrong. One of the wrong things has to do with decoding the county code in alert messages. If I program it with my own county code, it then selectively only alerts for events in somebody else's county. If I could figure out a number to program in that would cause it to alert for my county's messages, that would be swell, but the bug doesn't seem to be something simple like off-by-one.

Quirks like that, unfortunately, aren't the kind of things you can read about on a spec sheet before buying. You just find out from trying to use the thing, and then even when you can tell exactly what it's doing wrong, it's over the head of anyone you can reach in tech support.

 

An Emergency radio has Shortwave, AM-FM, Marine Band and Weather Alerts. These days some sell for less than $20. And the best ones have a handcrank generator and various types of lights, as well as a USB port so you can hand crank to charge your phone. Here's one I would research further for a lower price and to be certain it has all the the features too: https://www.ebay.com/itm/388657976121

 

OP is mistaken... Seattle area still has NOAA: NOAA Weather Radio, WXM62, Seattle-Tacoma, WA | Free Internet Radio | TuneIn

 

Not mistaken, but have dual residences. Long story, but been in the process of moving for "several years."

The Washington residence supposed to be sold. But, my old employer has me on a contract basis now and I work when I want and play when I want and my income is actually not that far off from when I was on payroll fulltime.

Washington is the old family home, a little "grey" a bit ramshackle, but my parents loved it as do I.

Wifey insisted on moving to be closer to the grandchildren. So, second home a few miles from them.

Personally, I think six or so hour drive is close enough --- and they lost NOAA.

OH, someday I will move, but it will be a couple more years.

 

i concur with the 6 hour drive, but ours is 6 minutes. as for emergency radios, i've never given it any thought.
i saw a crank up radio in ll bean once, and also have an 80's radio shack 9 volt transistor that i used to listen to baseball games on

 

When kids were small, wife drafted me to ocassionally take them to the movies.

Seemed to always be during a college game. That Radio Shack gem fit perfectly in shirt pocket and the ear plug did a fine job of drowning out Pokemon & friends and bringing in the dawgs vs. the cougs.

 

This makes no sense... What does your personal life have to do with proving the false claim that NOAA no longer is broadcasting? Do you think about the topic of discussion at hand or do you just not care?

 

If I gave the impression NOAA IS GONE, I apologize.

What I thought I wrote is I no longer get it around the grandkids house. Used to. But past several years...no. Asked a few neighbors, most of them had no idea of what I was talking about and one of them thought it was sort of a stupid thing to waste money on...he is entitled to his opinion

A couple of folks said, yeah it just "disappeared."

Never listen to it in Washington.

And you know, as Bob Wilson said, there is always the ignore button.

 

OK...

The way I see this is you need an emergency radio to do TWO things:
1. Provide a fallback 'trip wire' alerting system for weather and/or other emergencies that might kill you.
2. Serve as a method for getting information.

SAME equipped radios are core and key to the first thing, while any $10 garage sale alarm clock radio is probably sufficient for the latter.
SAME (or S.A.M.E.) radios are 'weather radios' that can be programmed to sound an alert (or NOT sound one) if one of the 450 NWS radio stations send one out for any of probably three dozen situations ranging from avalanche to zombies......well maybe NOT zombies but definitely tsunamis....

The "Toyota Camry" of SAME equipped radios is probably the Midland WR120.
There are better ones.
There are worse ones.
They're about $45 and they're worth it because they have a battery backup and an external antenna jack.
Set a reminder in your phone to replace the batteries semi-occasionally.

I actually have two of them because I still have 5 acres in the county that a family member in need lives on, and they both went off yesterday to warn me (us) of a severe thunderstorm in the area(s).
I also have a Red Cross app on my phone and it went off too......but the I suspect that if one of the National Weather Service radio stations ever fail in service then it will be an 'above the fold' story in CNN.
They would have gone off for "extreme heat" several times but one of the features of most SAME radios is that you can disable non-emergency emergency messages...including the weekly alerts.

NOT JUST weather emergencies will make these radios wake you up in the middle of the night.
Dam dam breaks, AMBER alerts, Toxic spills, wildfires, and yes....tsunamis.

Cell towers go down every day.
I know because I'm one of the few remaining responders to this type of 'emergency.'

Semi Finally....
We have EIGHT uniformed services.
NOAA is one of them.
The idea that NOAA is 'going away' is 'probably' counterfactual.

FINALLY.
One of the major disruptions you can expect from a weather related event is transportation.
THAT means that help may be delayed in getting to you, and if your house just got flattened by wind or swept away by flood you may not be easy to find.
Keep a police (or sports) whistle in your bug out bag.
I know people who also keep helmets too.....but this is probably another topic for another thread.....

Good Luck!

 

In our area and I thought most areas the Emergency Weather Broadcasts Warnings come on regular TV and the radio.
The regular radio also broadcast the weather and all alerts, switches over to constant coverage of major events and even has listeners calling in to make localized observation and comments - often more helpful than NOAA broadcasts.

 

That's true in all areas.
In fact, it's probably a requirement for an FCC license grant.

It's a gub'mint thing.
HOWEVER (comma!!!!)
Like ventless gas cans and auto stop-start it doesn't always work as advertised real-world.

How many people have over the air TV these days or listen to actual broadcast radio?
The idea behind the EMS radios are that they provide for a better chance that you will be awakened in the middle of the night even with power and service disruptions.
THEN you tune into your normal stations for news and amplifying information.

SAME radios are NOT the end-all, be all!
I've actually SEEN cases where there was a severe thunderstorm warning issued by the NWS AFTER the winds were over 60MPH and hail was present.

The idea is to have a fallback in case the normal stuff fails and you're sleeping, bathing, playing with kids and dogs etc....

 

It just depends on your mindset and maybe area situation - in our area not only are all warnings broadcast over media our state has a robust requirement for emergency warning system sirens that sound in all emergencies at all times day or night-and also cell phone warnings/notifications going off.

Bottom line - for us and our situation in our area - emergency radio= portable am/fm radio.

Our area has stations that are labeled talk stations with local talk show hosts that discuss topics and have call ins from the audience - in emergencies they switch to coverage of the emergency event with constant call ins from members of the community - infinitely more informative and entertaining than weather or emergency channels.

 

I was in a restaurant once where everybody's cell phones started honking for a tornado warning, based on the cell broadcast / Wireless Emergency Alert system.

The phones honked in groups according to people's cell service provider. The different groups honked several minutes apart. That wasn't what I would have expected to see.

If the tornado had actually come our way, we'd have been flat.

 

My company (FirstNet) phone literally saved my life a couple of years ago during a callout which was probably caused by the same cell.
It gave me the "Take Cover NOW!!!" warning and I managed to get beneath an overpass as the tornado roared by about where I would have been had I not stopped.
My personal phone also warbled the same warning about the same time but I was sorta busy at the time so I didn't get a time hack.

It was about 10pm and there's NO WAY I would have seen it in time with Mk-1 eyeballs, and it was only a later assessment (twisted trees and other debris) that differentiated this F2 from just very strong straight line winds that would have merely blown me off of the road.

The overpass also spared me from the accompanying hail....

 

I've got a similar one in my camp set equipment box. Like my flashlights, I tend to lose my small cheap electronics to leaky batteries.
While cell phone and TV alerts are great; it doesn't do you much good when your boon-docking and trying to get away from all the noise. A great example was last nights tsunami warning for the entire west coast. I've lived several years in Hawaii, so I know what those look like; but if it came at me in the dark while beach camping - Good Luck......