What is by far the cheapest, smallest or worst radio you've ever owned?

[jwt873]

I went to Australia on vacation quite a few years back. I never took any receiving equipment with me. While I was there, I wondered what shortwave would be like in the southern hemisphere, so I picked up a little Radio Shack DX-351 receiver. It was cheap. Around $30 if I recall.

it was terrible. I connected a 30 foot length of wire to the whip antenna.. I couldn't hear much at all. Not only that, but there were loud images from local FM stations appearing in the shortwave portions of the band. I still have it sitting on a shelf..

 

[K5TXC]

Worst radio for me was the Icom IC-R1. Terrible selectivity.

 

[PACNWDude]

worst radio I ever owned was a 2 transistor am radio, got it for Xmas in the 60's

+1 on this. Except mine was/is black with the gold speaker cover. Terrible transistor radio. Keep it just for the fact that it is old and is a radio/receiver. Could not pick up much at all, and about all it "hears" now is the pulse of my hot water heater electronics when a couple feet away from it.

 

[a727469]

Worst comm rig I've had? Hard to say. I've had 3 -- the Radio Shack DX-394, DX-160, and Yaesu FRG-7, along with a bunch of SW portables (DX-398, DX-390, etc.). The DX-160 was OK for a beginner back in the day, but its strength is a MW DX receiver. FRG-7 was tricky to tune on SSB on the higher end of the dial, making the 'Fine tuner' more usable, but its selectivity wasn't terrific for ham monitoring, although I did a lot of ham monitoring with it back in the day. It's pretty good for SWBC, and really great for MW DXing. Great sound. It will tune up to around 31 MHz, which is a plus if you've got the antenna and there's Low Band skip on 30-31 MHz.

I get good performance from my DX-394, especially on the ham bands, although I live in a low signals area, so I don't have to deal with overload the same way a lot of DXers would in other regions of the US (the 394 is famous for overload with longer antennas). Weakest part is some crosstalk here and there on MW, depending on conditions. I like the fact it tunes down to VLF. I use it a lot for ham band monitoring, especially CW. Being in a low signals HF environment, the DX-394 has worked out well for me.

The worst radio in general that I got was an off brand, $10 walkman style cassette/headset radio at a drug store in 2016 or 2017, that had DSP but no performance at all. It was definitely a locals-only type of radio, and even those locals didn't come in well. I was surprised, as most of the DSP pocket radios I've used are pretty good performers on both FM and AM.

I would have to comment on the dx-398. I know it got a bad rap for sensitivity off the whip antenna on shortwave, but with an external loop antenna for AM it was very nice and no real overloading on SW with a long wire. SSB was also pretty good. I bought and sold 3 of them for some reason..my final was on a closeout for around $40 at a local RS.

 

[TAC4]

Jesus this one has a lot of eye candy lol

 

[Omega-TI]

Jesus this one has a lot of eye candy lol

I did a reverse image search on this one because I thought it was a photoshop image, turns out it's real! The price on Amazon for that Retekess TR-113 is "interesting".

 

[Marcy57]

I built a RS Globe Patrol (kit) but never could get anything! ...think I messed up building it ,but it looked cool and got me going kinda in the hobby before I got my Patrolman 9, and DX-160 and it blossomed from there!
73,s Marcy

 

[Omega-TI]

I built a RS Globe Patrol (kit) but never could get anything! ...think I messed up building it ,but it looked cool and got me going kinda in the hobby before I got my Patrolman 9, and DX-160 and it blossomed from there!
73,s MarcyView attachment 166525

Oh yeah, the Globe Patrol radio was an anemic little regen radio. As a kid I had one, and even with the large dipole antenna and very good ground I had for it, only the boomer stations like Radio Nederland, Deutsche Welle, VOA, Radio Moscow, Radio Canada International, WWV and HCJB could be counted on. Sadly the Internet decimated shortwave. Yes, the DX-160 was and improvement, but almost anything was, even so I think I had more fun with that radio (as a kid) than any other I ever had.

 

[Marcy57]

Now that you mention HCJB yes! ...I gave it to the Pastor at church and he got it working he wanted
to listen to HCJB and DX Party line ...I moved on already to a DX-160 with a KRS external digital readout I bought off SPEEDX ..I told him to just keep it ...that is the story but for me worst receiver (but my fault) LOL!
73,s Marcy

 

[TAC4]

I did a reverse image search on this one because I thought it was a photoshop image, turns out it's real! The price on Amazon for that Retekess TR-113 is "interesting".

Yea at $299 CDN 🇨🇦 that is highway robbery lol someone
will buy it.

 

[TAC4]

I built a RS Globe Patrol (kit) but never could get anything! ...think I messed up building it ,but it looked cool and got me going kinda in the hobby before I got my Patrolman 9, and DX-160 and it blossomed from there!
73,s MarcyView attachment 166525

Yep my first shortwave at age 11. Picked up Radio Moscow
in English and was hooked for life. I made the big mistake
of using acid paste flux for soldering lol. The flux on hot
days in the summer inside the house would short the
radio out. Putting the radio in the freezer would solve
the problem for a while.

NOS kits on eBay go for good money.

 

[k7ng]

I would like to mention the Hallicrafters S-120.
It was pretty much an 'All-American 5' tube radio with an extra conversion stage to give shortwave band coverage. No selectivity, no sensitivity above 4 MHz, birdies and such all over, and the drift was, well, awful. I did manage to hear CW on the 2 MHz marine band (1960's timeframe) but most of what I heard on bands higher than that was crossmod. Ugh.

 

[Boombox]

I went to Australia on vacation quite a few years back. I never took any receiving equipment with me. While I was there, I wondered what shortwave would be like in the southern hemisphere, so I picked up a little Radio Shack DX-351 receiver. It was cheap. Around $30 if I recall.

it was terrible. I connected a 30 foot length of wire to the whip antenna.. I couldn't hear much at all. Not only that, but there were loud images from local FM stations appearing in the shortwave portions of the band. I still have it sitting on a shelf..

I still have a DX-351. It worked reasonably on SW, not all that good on FM and AM. Would overload easily on SW if you clipped a wire. Somehow the bandswitch got broken. SW works, but the AM-FM-SW-selector no longer works.

Today's equivalents -- the little XHDATA analog dial, DSP sets (D-328, D219) are miles better.

 

[Boombox]

I would have to comment on the dx-398. I know it got a bad rap for sensitivity off the whip antenna on shortwave, but with an external loop antenna for AM it was very nice and no real overloading on SW with a long wire. SSB was also pretty good. I bought and sold 3 of them for some reason..my final was on a closeout for around $40 at a local RS.

I've gotten a lot of use out of my DX-398, especially monitoring the ham bands. And you're right, they were notorious for being poor off the whip, but really good off an external antenna. Good SSB on them. The memories were useful, especially bein able to label MW channels (the 9 or 10 or so MW memory locations) and SW memory 'pages'. They're really good on MW, something I never appreciated that much until a few years ago. And I've had mine since 1998.

I've been pretty lucky with my comm rigs and radios. Even the DX-160 worked well. You just had to get used to its foibles. It would drift a bit until it warmed up. Noticeable on the ham bands and SW (especially the higher SW ranges), not so bad on MW. I still fire it up now and then on MW. Usually have to exercise the bandswitch. The old rotary bandswitches can oxidize if not used a lot. Even my DX-394, as I mentioned, does OK because I'm in a hole surrounded by hills so it doesn't overload except rarely.

I'll backup what jwt873 said about the DX-351. Wasn't as good as the next larger Radio Shack/Sangean analog dial radios of that era (early 1990s). The DX-350s were pretty good radios, actually, considering they were simple analog rigs.

 

[vagrant]

My smallest is probably the Yaesu VX-3R which is around 3”x2”x1”. Considering the one watt output and the tiny Diamond SRHF10 antenna I use, it works well enough on VHF, UHF and broadcast AM & FM. Outside of that it is a dog, even with proper antennas for Air and HF. Not that I want to carry an HF antenna around, but Air would’ve been nice.

While I have better quality radios, due to its small size I carry and use it more often away from home for the above noted bands it works on. I even use a mono earmold plug with it at times.

My worst is probably the Yaesu VR-500. RX is wide open and unless you have a PL tone set, or some filters inline, you’ll get whatnot RF signals you do not want. It also has a constant ticking noise which I observed on two others as well. Still, I often use it for monitoring local PD & FD at times around the house. It also uses one of those tiny Diamond RHF10 antennas.

 

[a727469]

Never had the vr-500 only the icom r5 and r6 since the icom was triple conversion but both about the same small size and the yaesu did not have ctcss/pl as I recall but the icom did which I definitely needed. Plus I already had an icom computer programming cable so easy to set up.

 

[Omega-TI]

My smallest is probably the Yaesu VX-3R which is around 3”x2”x1”. Considering the one watt output and the tiny Diamond SRHF10 antenna I use, it works well enough on VHF, UHF and broadcast AM & FM. Outside of that it is a dog, even with proper antennas for Air and HF. Not that I want to carry an HF antenna around, but Air would’ve been nice.

While I have better quality radios, due to its small size I carry and use it more often away from home for the above noted bands it works on. I even use a mono earmold plug with it at times.

My worst is probably the Yaesu VR-500. RX is wide open and unless you have a PL tone set, or some filters inline, you’ll get whatnot RF signals you do not want. It also has a constant ticking noise which I observed on two others as well. Still, I often use it for monitoring local PD & FD at times around the house. It also uses one of those tiny Diamond RHF10 antennas.

That's good to know, and might help someone out. Usually companies like Yaesu, Icom or Kenwood don't put out sub-par products. It's usually the service (hi Kenwood) that is usually the biggest problem. They sure pack the components in don't they...

 

[Omega-TI]

I built a RS Globe Patrol (kit) but never could get anything! ...think I messed up building it ,but it looked cool and got me going kinda in the hobby before I got my Patrolman 9, and DX-160 and it blossomed from there!
73,s MarcyView attachment 166525

I've been pondering replacing the guts of my Globe Patrol with newer modern internals so I could use it as a daily driver, more for a couple of local stations. For this, I'd actually consider purchasing a cheap POS analog Chinese radio to gut. Finding one that could actually use the same knobs and have the scale be accurate seems problematic though.

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

I've been pondering replacing the guts of my Globe Patrol with newer modern internals so I could use it as a daily driver, more for a couple of local stations. For this, I'd actually consider purchasing a cheap POS analog Chinese radio to gut. Finding one that could actually use the same knobs and have the scale be accurate seems problematic though.

It has a very interesting design. It would seem worthy of repairing and optimizing its present form. Perhaps refreshing the resistors in the regenerative stage and retuning the tuned stages with a 20th or 21st century RF generator.

Transistor regenerative receiver 'Science Fair Globe Patrol'

Circuit diagram and description of the Japanese regenerative receiver kit 'Science Fair Globe Patrol'

dl4cs.de

 

[cavmedic]

The GE searcher. No selectivity to be found. Every VHF frequency in the area had the ability to stop scan, regardless of where the tuning knobs were parked!
View attachment 165232

My very first scanner back in the 80's ......