Domestic Radio on Board

[john_morris_uk]

We are in the market for a Radio for the boat. The little Sony one that we have had for years has finally given up the ghost. (It got so bad last year that I had to solder the wire back on the cone of the loud-speaker to make it work!)

I looked at Roberts Radios in a shop but had no idea what was a good or bad buy.

Before anyone suggests it, we will probably get round to putting the 'Car type' CD player and Radio in again one day, but I need something that will get 198 Khz LW for Radio 4 shipping forecasts and many car types don't get LW any more. Something to sit in the cockpit with. (I am not sure I am going to get round to cockpit speakers for a while...)

I think that I heard that there was a review of Radio Receivers in Sailing Today a month or so ago. Does anyone know what was recommended?

 

[ShipsWoofy]

If I was shopping for a radio as you suggest I would definetly look at the Morphy Richards 9 band dynamo radio. A quick search shows they are around £35 from the interweb

 

[Anonymous]

If you need to get weathers on 198kHz it is very helpful to have a recorder and timer as the weathers come on at such antisocial hours. I have a small Robers that cost less than £30 with tape recorder and alarm timer that will switch on. It is a bit 'cheap and nasty' but it does fine for that purpose. You really need to get a short cassette for it as there is no alarm 'off' and the unit switches off at the end of tape and it is a bit wasteful on batteries otherwise.

 

[Joe_Cole]

We've got a couple of cheap radios from Lidl's. At £14 a go it doesn't matter if they fall overboard, and they have long wave as well as the usual FM and medium wave. They've also got a clock so you can set it to come on with the weather. Not bad at all.

For our "proper" radio, I've got a car radio from Argos. LW, Medium wave and FM. Plus CD, plus Digital Radio which really is superb. Very strongly recomended.

 

[jay]

I'm conetmaplting buying a car type with DAB. What sort do you have? & - what aerial does it use. My existing radio uses the VHF aerial via a FM/VHF splitter. any idea if this will work?

 

[Joe_Cole]

Made by "Ministry of Sound", available from Argos. It cost around £150.

The short answer on the aerial is that it depends! A VHF aerial , or splitter may work. I wanted to make sure I got the best out of the DAB and made my own aerial which is fitted on the backstay. Cost me nothing and it works very well.

 

[jay]

can i ask what you used for the aerial? and is this providing just the DAB signal or the FM/AM as well?

 

[Joe_Cole]

The aerial is a dipole aerial made from two lengths of stainless wire (I used stainless welding wire, but monel wire would be fine). They are joined to the co-axial cable (inner core to one "arm" of the aerial, outer sheath to the other "arm"). To make it rigid the wire is stuffed into fibreglass tubes (i.e. lengths of tent pole!) and glued together. A bit of self amalgamating tape and hey presto! Dead easy, took an hour to make and a lot cheaper than the £40 I was quoted for a non-marine aerial. DAB aerials need to be mounted vertically to work best.

The length of the wires is important and I can't remember for the life of me how I worked it out, but I could always measure mine up for you unless somebody can remember the formula and post it here. It was of the order of 14inches.

I don't need another aerial on mine, but it depends on your installation/location. In reality though, other than 198 for the weather, I only use the DAB. The sound quality and choice of stations is so good that the other wavebands are virtually redundant. Offshore it would be different.

You may have gathered, I am a fan of Digital radio! It really is superb.

 

[roger]

Aerial for car type radio

For a conventional car type radio I bought a cheap fixed length type car aerial and stuffed it into unused space between the deck and the headlining. Positioning doesnt seem very critical.