If you're looking for a decent cheap Railband radio, check out the Radtel RT-950 Pro.

[ratboy]

I got one yesterday, and so far, I like it a lot. First thing I did when I took it out of the box (Fully charged, BTW) was to put 161.070, the local NS, the Holland, Ohio detector freq 160.800, and the CSX 160.230 in it's 3 VFO's. It started talking almost instantly, and the audio is VERY good. Much clearer than any of my handhelds that I could compare it to, including GRE PSR500, Yaesu VX-170, Uniden SDS200 (If it hears rail at all), and Uniden BC-125AT. I bought the "full band tactical" antenna, the shortest one, from Radtel, and it seems pretty decent, and is a very thick "tape measure" folding antenna, so it should hold up well. It's labeled 136-512MHZ. With the optional antenna, reception is very good, and the clarity is a huge plus. I haven't tried to connect it via blutooth to my car stereo yet. FM Broadcast is nice, and with the also purchased optional 27Mhz telescoping whip, AM BC was decent, and CH 19 CB was whining away in the background while some echoing truck driver was ranting about his truck needing some sort of turbo work on it.

Only real complaints are the channel knob isn't continuous, so if you want to actually go up or down much in frequency, you need to use the 4 way pad. The display light is perfect at night, a little weak in my overlit office. It looks better in the pic above. Other than that, it's the usual mystery manual, just needs to be played with, but basic use was super easy.
For $113 including the 3 extra antennas, it's worth a shot.

 

[marlin39a]

I’m interested. $76.00 on Amazon, early black Friday. I’ll be watching this thread.

 

[buddrousa]

I have one and it works very well on my local 2 meter and 70cm repeaters.

 

[kc2asb]

Thanks, great write-up! For $113 with the extras, it's a good buy, about $50 less than a 125AT. I guess the question boils down to durability/reliability and support should anything go wrong. Honestly, at that price point, it wouldn't be worth the cost of any post-warranty repairs.

 

[n7maq-1]

Mine has a continuous rotary encoder.

 

[EAFrizzle]

Thanks, great write-up! For $113 with the extras, it's a good buy, about $50 less than a 125AT. I guess the question boils down to durability/reliability and support should anything go wrong. Honestly, at that price point, it wouldn't be worth the cost of any post-warranty repairs.

I have an 860 and an 880, and they're great receivers, so I'm not surprised the 950 is as well. For someone that already has a scanner, they're great for monitoring and freeing up the scanner. It may not seem like it at first glance, but having a third VFO is a big benefit, especially for rail and air listening.


And if you get bored, there's always LW/MW/SW to check out...

 

[EAFrizzle]

And now y'all done made me go and buy one...

 

[ratboy]

Mine has a continuous rotary encoder.

You are correct, I thought it "dead ended", but it's the huge base of the antenna and the pointer on the knob that locks up the knob in a certain place. A little dremeling on the antenna base, or the knob will fix that, and make the radio much more pleasant to use. There's a line on it right where it rubs, so if I have one of my bits or stones here at work, I can fix it tonight! I guess I should have put the stock antenna on it first, but from what I've heard and seen, it's not worth much. And the knob came right off, so that will be what gets sanded/ground on, all it needs is about a 1/16" removed from the bottom of the pointer. A quick snip with my flush nippers took care of it, and you can barely tell it was done, those nippers work great.

 

[ratboy]

The thing seems very solidly built, and would make a nice weapon if needed. I have quite a few of the Baofeng,Quansheng radios, and while they work ok, the Radtels and similar radios seem a definite level above.

 

[spongella]

And now y'all done made me go and buy one...

I'm close buying one after looking through their catalog.

 

[ratboy]

I got mine from Radtel and it took about a week to get here.

 

[kc2asb]

I have an 860 and an 880, and they're great receivers, so I'm not surprised the 950 is as well. For someone that already has a scanner, they're great for monitoring and freeing up the scanner. It may not seem like it at first glance, but having a third VFO is a big benefit, especially for rail and air listening.


And if you get bored, there's always LW/MW/SW to check out...

Absolutely. If I didn't have too many scanners plus an AOR AR-5000, Icom R-7000 and a number of HF receivers, the Radtel would make sense.

 

[EAFrizzle]

I'm justifying more radios by setting up a small station in the kitchen for SW and scanning, thus saving on the wear and tear of carrying radios room to room...

 

[EAFrizzle]

Got it about an hour ago, and I'm very impressed with the 950. Reception seems good all around, but is outstanding on SW. A telescopic whip brings in signal well for HF/VHF/UHF, haven't bothered with 8/900. Good audio, heavy on the mids and upper mids, AM and SSB audio is especially good. Nice feel in the hand, but much bigger around and not as solid feeling as the 860 or 880. Will try it out on an outside antenna later or tomorrow, as im not able to pick up any rail traffic here indoors.

Glad I got it. It'll get a good workout tomorrow on all bands. Just have to get a diplexer to have all bands to the antenna jack.

 

[EAFrizzle]

Correction: apparently the RT-950 does pick up RR transmissions on a telescopic antenna. It helps to have it turned on. 🤪

Listening to WRMI 5850 and 3 RR channels right now. Charging base is noisy, as is USB-C direct to the battery.

All in all, getting more impressed by the minute and very happy with the purchase.

 

[ratboy]

I was listening to a bunch of HF stuff yesterday morning in the car on the 27Mhz whip. Still being very, "How the hell do I do this?", I enjoyed using it, a lot more than my Quansheng whatever model it is. That thing is just awkward to use on HF, but it does receive pretty well, as long as you don't get crazy with a wire antenna on HF. Audio is pretty tinny, and that just makes the RT-950Pro a better choice. I'm still trying to see if there is a TX lockout. So far, I haven't found one.

 

[ratboy]

A few observations, and nagging, to me anyway, questions.

So far, very little to really complain about, especially for the price.

Display could be a little brighter at maximum, but it's fine most of the time. Perfect in a dark car at the tracks.

Why do radio companies make the lanyard end with really small cord, and in some cases, the hole it ties through, just a tiny bit bigger? I tried to put the lanyard on for quite a while, at 330am, I have time to kill. I finally took a twist tie, threaded it through the tiny lanyard hole, then looped the end onto the end loop of the lanyard. I used a hemostat to pull on the twist tie, it popped off, but it just got the lanyard through the hole so I could use the hemostat to pull it the rest of the way through. Needless difficulty caused by some need to save space(?) on a not that small radio? I don't get it.

I updated the firmware to .22, main issues were the weird PC connector being hard to get the screw hole lined up. Why not just use a USB cable or a 3 wire phone cord? Once I told it the right com port, it loaded it fine. I guess it was my PC, but in the videos, it was like 10x faster to do the update.

The manual, as usual, is pretty useless. I learned more watching one video for 15 minutes than looking at the manual for quite a while. The radio companies, most of them anyway, need to get their act together on writing manuals for some of the more complicated models out there, and this is one of them. Uniden's scanner manuals are a really bad joke, and have been for a very long time. Best ones I've seen in the last few years are for Yaesu radios. I remember my Icom 24AT's manual from about 1991 being just awful, so it's nothing new. To set up a repeater, you had to go to one page to set the freq, another one to see how to set the offest, another one to set the tone. Almost every function was called "scanning", searching was called "scanning". Ridiculous.

At work, as with every other radio, there's not much coming through. VHF is totally wiped out with all the PCs in this side of the building. Along with the PCs, there are LAN cables by the hundreds, just on this side of the building alone, so I can hear maybe 3 AMBC stations, and about 10 FM. SW/HF is if you can hear WWV at an appropriate freq, it's good to go. I was hearing(barely over the BUZZZZZZ) it at 5MHZ on a 20 foot hunk of wire, so I knew all was well. Most listening I do in my car or at a friend's house, which is nice and quiet, RFI wise. It's kind of a tie between my apartment and work as to which one has the worst RFI. They both do.

 

[EAFrizzle]

I like the improvement Radtel has made to the menus compared to the 860 and 880; it's much more intuitive than either of those. It was easier for me since I'm already familiar with how they set things up (do we really need to change the English to something different that doesn't describe the function either?).

Like the 860 and 880, the RT-950 has great VHF reception; no problems at all on WX and RR frequencies. HF on a telescoping whip is surprisingly good with HFGCS coming in well and broadcasts a pleasure to listen to. While three VFOs are great for rail monitoring, this radio really shines on the airbands. Three V/U frequencies and one HF puts a lot of spectrum in your hand.

For me, the audio is great. At my age, I have a great deal of hearing loss, especially in the mids and upper mids. A lot of handheld units that people complain about sounding tinny or thin punch right through for me. It's not something to listen to music on, but speech comes through clearly on AM and SSB.

All in all, I'm liking it.