Category Archives: FM

Mike reviews the Retekess TR608 AM/FM/AIR/SW receiver

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mike S, who shares his assessment of the Retekess TR608. Mike writes:

For this model, the company marketing electronics under the Retekess brand seems to be using a different supplier compared to the previous digital-radio-plus-memory—card-player products. The result is a more traditionally styled multiband DSP radio which runs on (gasp) traditional AA batteries. Its feature set takes inspiration from the Radiwow R108 and original CCrane Skywave, but with mixed results (albeit at a fraction of the price). It delivers decent performance for its price class but more serious listeners would be advised to spend a little more on a more established model.

Pros

    • Usual set of features: sleep timer, alarm, scanning, auto memory fill.
    • Uses replaceable alkaline or NiMH “AA” cells.
    • Decent sensitivity across the board.
    • Full shortwave coverage.
    • Frequency display is large and contrasty.
    • Dial light is effective and can be disabled. Display is readable without it, even in dim light.
    • No annoying keypad “beep”, so no mad rush to discover how it can be disabled.
    • Speaker can play reasonably loud without distortion.
    • FM reception is solid with good frequency response and stereo reception through headphones; this also activates a display indicator.
    • MW/SW reception is NOT plagued by digital hash bleeding through from the processor as with most other models in this price range!

Cons

    • Significantly larger than expected.
    • Unfortunately the added cabinet space is not utilized for a more wide-range speaker; audio is tinny.
    • Clumsy mounting of one spring in the battery compartment on my sample makes it almost impossible to insert the third AA battery without risking damage.
    • Many keypad buttons are so tiny and almost flush with the cabinet, that they are difficult to press.
    • Lens over LCD display is molded and unpolished with moiré distortion at some viewing angles.
    • Air band reception marred by birdies, bleed-through from other bands, and lack of squelch.
    • Volume control defaults back to level “10” under some circumstances (the manual warns about this).
    • Confusing 2-level LOCK function requires close attention to almost microscopic indicator on LCD.
    • No battery level indicator.
    • Although the manual advises that batteries can be charged using the 4.5V coaxial socket, no charging indicator is obvious.
    • Rotary knob, used for both tuning and volume adjustments, has no detents and so can easily spin off target.
    • Assigned function (no indication) depends on whether the tuning or volume buttons on the keypad were the last to be used.
    • No fine tuning outside of pre-programmed increments.
    • MW selectivity is a bit too wide for congested night reception.
    • MW reception occasionally exhibits weird artifacts; ghost images, sputtering audio on marginal signals, and “processed” sounding voice audio. Don’t know if these are DSP or AGC related, or a mixture of both. I have observed the same thing with the Eton Mini and other inexpensive portables using marginal DSP implementations.

SHOWSTOPPER ALERT: MW band channel assignments marred by 9kHz-centric firmware bug. Even after changing to 10kHz channel spacing (undocumented), the CPU still “thinks” in 9kHz assignments for direct input. Entering FREQ-1-0-1-0-FREQ should get you to 1010 kHz; but it actually lands on 1018 kHz because that is the nearest channel in the 9kHz band plan. You are now stuck in frequency step hell, as the up-down frequency keys still operate in 10KHz mode but do not know they are now off bandplan. UP/DOWN yield 1028/1008, not 1020/1000. The only way to recover is to enter a MW frequency that is the same in both bandplans, or to power off and double-reset the step rate resulting in all memories being lost.

Thank you so much for the review, Mike.  It sounds like this little receiver isn’t ready for prime time yet. The issues with frequency steps on the mediumwave band is certainly a show-stopper for anyone in North America. Indeed, it sounds like mediumwave reception, in general, is mediocre at best. At least the receiver isn’t plagued with internal noises.

With pricing around $29.99-$39.99 it’s certainly a bargain radio. But I’m sure you’re thinking what I’m thinking: you pay for what you get.

The Retekess TR608 can be purchased on eBay or Amazon.com (affiliate link).

Sangean DT-140 & SR-32: New Sangean AM/FM radios

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Michael Schuster, who writes:

The Sangean SR-32 from the 2020 catalog.

Attached image [above] is extracted from a PDF of the 2020 catalog, it shows the
upcoming Sangean DT-140 and SR-32.

Wondering if the SR-32 (from the almost-defunct “slide rule” series) uses DSP-as-analog tuning like its larger sibling with speaker.

Thanks for the tip, Mike!  Yes, I’d be willing to bet that the SR-32 is DSP-based. I might have to check these out further.

It’s also nice to see that they also feature both the ATS-909x and ATS-405 shortwave portables in the 2020 catalog!

Click here to download the Sangean 2020 catalog (PDF).

The Verge: “Who’s afraid of the PIRATE Act? Not Joan Martinez”

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mark Hirst, who shares this article from The Verge:

When she was growing up in East Flatbush among the Haitian diaspora, former pirate broadcaster Joan Martinez — no relation to the New York radio legend Angie Martinez, despite what Joan claimed to her friends as a youth — said that the sounds of pirate radio were the backdrop to her childhood. “Starting Friday night, all throughout the weekend, you would just hear all these like crazy DJs just talking and all this music,” Martinez says. Her parents’ apartment was the meeting spot for her whole family, a place where they’d reminisce about being in Haiti. They needed a place that felt like home. Martinez says that, as a kid, she never understood why the stations they listened to only broadcast on the weekends. As she got older, there were fewer of them — and then in 2010, she says, they started to come back online.

Martinez got into the scene as a broadcaster after her mother turned down an offer to be a DJ at a pirate station. “She was like, ‘No, I don’t want to. However, I do have a daughter that did study broadcasting in college,’” — Joan — “and then all of a sudden they were like, ‘We want her. Like, can we bring her in here?’” Martinez went. It was 2010. Her first job was as an anchor, where she talked through the news from the Caribbean and New York City. Then she filled in for a couple of high school girls who had their own show — and eventually took the spot over completely. It was a talk show she did with her friends for a year and a half, until Martinez decided to go back to school. (“It was a pretty live show. Sometimes things get a little raunchy, sometimes things get a little too crazy and it’s like, I don’t want to piss off my supervisor,” she says. Pirates have org charts and standards, too.)

After school, she went back, but not for very long; academia pulled her back in, and today, she’s in grad school, currently at work on her thesis. “I was doing pirate for a good five years and then when I got into grad school, since the coursework was becoming very time consuming, I had to kind of let that go,” Martinez says, adding that she’s mostly involved these days in an administrative, consulting way. “However, you know, I still keep my fingers in their pot.”[…]

Continue reading the full article at The Verge.

The Flat Bush area of Brooklyn, NY, is the cultural center of the FM Pirate Radio Scene. Check out David Goren’s Brookly Pirate Radio Soundmap to dive in deeper!

RadioTapes.com: a treasure trove of airchecks from the Minneapolis/St. Paul markets

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Cassettes

Photo by Ar Meftah

One of our contributors on the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive, Tom Gavaras, has been sharing some brilliant airchecks. I also discovered that Tom runs an amazing site simply chock-full of Minneapolis/St. Paul airchecks. Tom writes:

Hi Thomas,

[…]As an FYI … I own/run a website called RadioTapes (www.RadioTapes.com). It features more than 2,000 airchecks of Minneapolis/St. Paul radio stations dating back to 1924. You will also find some shortwave recordings that I previously posted (on the Special Postings page).

In addition to my collection, the website includes airchecks provided by more 100 contributors. RadioTapes also has a Facebook page with 1,400 followers.

Post readers: I strongly suggest you check out Tom’s amazing archive of airchecks.  If you ever lived in or DXed the Minneapolis/St. Paul market, you’ll certainly hear some familiar voices and IDs.

Thank you Tom!

Click here to check out RadioTapes.com.

The Public Radio: A one frequency FM receiver housed in a Mason jar

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul, who shares a number of articles about the one-frequency FM radio called the Public Radio:

Might be of interest to you and readers of the SWLing Post:
https://www.thepublicrad.io/

Why does the Public Radio cost $60?
http://pencerw.com/feed/2018/11/21/why-its-sixty-dollars

How to program a radio which is sealed inside a cardboard shipping box (they did not implement this for production):
https://wp.josh.com/2017/03/18/capacitive-coupling-casestudy-programming-the-public-radio-without-removing-it-from-its-sealed-shipping-box/

The Public Radio manufacturing line:
http://pencerw.com/feed/2018/2/8/the-public-radios-assembly-fulfillment-processes

Thanks for sharing, Paul. We’ve mentioned the Public Radio before, but I did not realize they were completely produced and assembled in the US.

Post Readers: Please comment if you own a Public Radio. I’m very curious what you think about the audio fidelity.

C. Crane CCRadio3 now shipping

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Steve Lebkuecher, who notes that C. Crane is now shipping the CCRadio3:

Click here to read our review of the CCRadio3—a unit we consider to be one of the best full-sized AM radios currently on the market.

Click here to check out the CCRadio3 at C. Crane.

Swiss Army Knife FM antenna

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Balázs Kovács, who shares the following video of a Swiss Army knife and tweezers being used as FM antennas:

Click here to view on YouTube.

Thanks for sharing this, Balázs. The video actually makes a good point: it takes so little to make an effective FM antenna to receive local stations. I’ve been with repair technicians when working on radios They’ll often use their precision screwdriver as an antenna to test the receiver before reassembly.

I also carry a couple cheap instrumentation patch cord with alligator clips on both ends to act as a short antenna or antenna extension when needed. Honestly, It’s amazing how often I reach for them!