Americana "last gasp" AM only transistor radio
 

My flea market friend gave me this still in the box Americana Chinese made AM only battery operated radio model 602. It runs on a standard 9V battery and it works; but, is not the best performing radio on the block.

This is not something that I would have bought; but, it was free and it appears to be one of the last AM only radios; so, I'll find a place for it.

Does anyone have any idea as to when these were made? I was thinking late '80's-early '90's; but, I really don't know.

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/f...ricana0001.jpg

I remember seeing one of those back in high school - I think a friend's mother was trying to give it away - she had won it at bingo or something. So that would date it to late 80's or so. Also, I don't think I've ever seen anything made in Red China prior to the mid/late 80's.

And, I forgot to mention that this thing is so cheap that it does not even have an earphone jack. I was playing around with it tonight and it does not do too well on distant stations, even at night. It does OK on strong local stations; but, is pretty much useless otherwise.

Ain't gonna win no Beauty Prizes, neither...

If this radio plays well only on strong local stations and doesn't pull in distant ones, even after sundown local time, I'd say it probably has a bare-bones chassis with no more than four transistors; that or else, if it has six transistors or more, it may be far out of alignment. Another possibility is the battery is weak or nearly dead. I'd try the radio with a new battery before doing anything drastic. I have several battery-powered transistor radios here that won't work worth a darn if the batteries are the least bit low; since I am 33 miles east of Cleveland and the radio and TV station towers are about 10 or 15 miles further to the southwest, I notice it when any of my sets' sensitivity drops. When the batteries are good, I can get every Cleveland station here as well as if I were still in the suburbs; however, let the batteries go down to, for example, three volts for a 6-volt set and I lose just about everything but a 1-kW local station five miles away.

OTOH, your little portable radio may have been designed purposely with low sensitivity, for use in near-suburban or urban strong-signal areas. It sounds to me like this radio may have been a promotional item given away by radio stations during live-remote broadcasts.

It's funny, but I would rather expect this radio to contain a few dozen transistors,
but all inside the same integrated circuit. Any way the innards can be photographed?

I saw at least a half dozen of these on eBay last night, in white and beige. It may have been the last "table style" AM radio, only meaning it's not a pocket transistor set. I know Radio Shack kept that AM "Flavoradio" around long enough to be manufactured in China in the early 2000's.

Had one of those Flavoradios in the mid seventies. That was a honest
radio that could pull some DX at night.

I thought it would be one of those one IC deals. They had those AM broadcast band all in one ICs that they would build in electronics classes/schools. We need a picture of the inside please.

On the sensitivity issue its most likely antenna. If it has one of those tiny ferrite rod deals that the issue. The better the radio the better the antenna.

Hook a long wire up to it and watch it go.

If it's like an el-cheapo that I found awhile back, it's probably based on the MK484 IC (looks like a transistor, but it isn't)

I did open it and it has seven transistors. Of course, one (or more) of those may be wired as a diode as I really didn't pay that much attention. The loopstick antenna is small. It's really nothing more than a pocket radio chassis in a slightly larger cabinet. I'll post a picture of the inside as soon as I can.

I have a belt-clip stereo FM scan radio that uses the headphone cord as an antenna, and it works fairly well in this area which is about 35-40 miles from the Cleveland FM stations (which do not transmit from the city, but are scattered around at least two southwestern suburbs; I'm near Lake Erie, some 30+ miles from downtown).

FM, and particularly stereo FM, are much more demanding when it comes to signal strength than AM ever was, so I'm really amazed that my little "Sonaki" stereo FM belt-clip receiver works as well as it does in this area with such a poor antenna. I haven't found a way, however, to hitch an external FM antenna to this radio (no external terminals that I can see); if I could, I'll bet I could get stations 70 miles away very easily, although they might well be crowded together if the radio had an actual tuning dial (it doesn't).

As to AM, I did not realize that the size of the ferrite loopstick antennas in portable radios mattered that much; after all, the loopsticks in 6-transistor portables aren't much longer than maybe four inches, if that much, and they seem to do a creditable job of picking up usable local signals in daytime, as well as DX at night (whatever the true definition of "AM DX" is in these days of the FCC's 750-mile nighttime coverage limits for former clear-channel AM stations). They can't be too long in the shirt-pocket portables because of the small size of the cabinets, but in most of them they extend almost the width of the latter. The only radios I've seen that can use really long loopsticks are full-size portables; the AM loopstick in my Sony TFM-7200W AM/FM 3-volt portable, for example, must be at least six inches long and maybe longer, as the radio is a good-sized portable from the early 1970s.

I had an "America" just like the one pictured, but in a fit of cleaning/throwing out one day, I gave it to Goodwill :-(
I had no idea it was collectible, or one of the last AM-only transistors. Guess everything is collectible-to someone.
I have a tiny "National" AM-only mini-transistor, made in China, looks like it could have been made in the 90s. Length and width are about the same as a credit card; width maybe 1/4 in. I used to listen to Seattle Mariners games on it last summer or the year before, until it finally died. I still have it, in a box with other small transistor sets.

Sorry, meant to say "thickness" 1/4 inch.

Well their quality degraded severely by 1990 when I bought two of them. I think Mother still has one of them in case of power loss. It's good enough to pick up strong local stations but they are el cheapo extreme. Also the tuning caps on mine were very stiff and hard to fine tune.

Next time (if there is a next time) I see an "old" (70's) Flavoradio I'll pick it up and give it a shot.