I am looking for a weather radio for the car, to use on hikes, and to keep at my house when not on the road.
Turns out, it is really difficult to find a ratio with the right features
Features I am looking for:
- The radio should permanently scan across all 7 stations. Not just on startup, and it should not immediately lock to the strongest station. When out on the road, I want to be alerted if any forecast office issues a warning.
- As a minimum have Public Alert, i.e. alert me when the 1050 Hz tone is received.
- Portable form factor
- S.A.M.E. alerting is nice to have, i.e. messages can be selected depending on the area and message type. Should be easily selectable, if I am at home, I press the 'home' button and it only alerts to my specific area, if I am on the road, I press the 'driving' button and it alerts to anything, and if I am camping, it only alerts to stuff I want to be woken up for, no missing children or weather watches.
Radios I've looked at:
Midland:
- HH50B: Great HT form factor, does not scan. Only locks to the strongest station. No S.A.M.E features.
- WR120, WR300, WR400, ER310: Great many features, but as far as I can tell, they do not scan ("scan" mode just means they lock to the strongest station).
Others:
- Various hand-crank radios on Amazon with mechanical tuning knobs: No scanning, no alerting.
- Baofeng: Scanning, ideal form factor, scans, but sadly can't alert to 1050Hz tone.
- Yaesu: Some can scan and alert on 1050, but not sure if they can scan all channels (documents I found say in weather mode they check every 5 seconds, which would not be enough to check all channels, as the tone is 10 seconds long. Expensive.
- Uniden Bearcat BC125AT: Scanning, has 1050Hz alert. Might work, but could have same issue of only checking a single channel every 5 seconds. More expensive models have S.A.M.E. capabilities, but slow to program.
Any other radios I should be looking at?
Turns out, it is really difficult to find a ratio with the right features
Features I am looking for:
- The radio should permanently scan across all 7 stations. Not just on startup, and it should not immediately lock to the strongest station. When out on the road, I want to be alerted if any forecast office issues a warning.
- As a minimum have Public Alert, i.e. alert me when the 1050 Hz tone is received.
- Portable form factor
- S.A.M.E. alerting is nice to have, i.e. messages can be selected depending on the area and message type. Should be easily selectable, if I am at home, I press the 'home' button and it only alerts to my specific area, if I am on the road, I press the 'driving' button and it alerts to anything, and if I am camping, it only alerts to stuff I want to be woken up for, no missing children or weather watches.
Radios I've looked at:
Midland:
- HH50B: Great HT form factor, does not scan. Only locks to the strongest station. No S.A.M.E features.
- WR120, WR300, WR400, ER310: Great many features, but as far as I can tell, they do not scan ("scan" mode just means they lock to the strongest station).
Others:
- Various hand-crank radios on Amazon with mechanical tuning knobs: No scanning, no alerting.
- Baofeng: Scanning, ideal form factor, scans, but sadly can't alert to 1050Hz tone.
- Yaesu: Some can scan and alert on 1050, but not sure if they can scan all channels (documents I found say in weather mode they check every 5 seconds, which would not be enough to check all channels, as the tone is 10 seconds long. Expensive.
- Uniden Bearcat BC125AT: Scanning, has 1050Hz alert. Might work, but could have same issue of only checking a single channel every 5 seconds. More expensive models have S.A.M.E. capabilities, but slow to program.
Any other radios I should be looking at?
