Americana "last gasp" AM only transistor radio

[radiotvnut]

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.

[AUdubon5425]

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.

[radiotvnut]

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.

[Sandy G]

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

[Jeffhs]

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.

[electroking]

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?

[AUdubon5425]

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.

[electroking]

Originally Posted by AUdubon5425

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.

[AUdubon5425]

Originally Posted by electroking

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

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.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by AUdubon5425

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.

I had an RS "Flavoradio" (in a sky-blue cabinet) for years as well, but unfortunately it got lost when I moved here 10.5 years ago. Don't know what happened to it. Probably got pitched with a bunch of other stuff being thrown out of the house (I wasn't there when the house I grew up in was being cleaned out in preparation for sale; long story and OT for this thread).

I don't know how often the Atlanta area or the New Orleans area (wherever your mother lives today) has power outages, but she will be ready for the next one, if and when...maybe. I say "maybe" because I wonder just how much emergency info she will hear over the radio. Wasn't there a discussion here just before the DTV transition addressing the fact that radio is utterly useless these days in emergencies, because radio stations no longer broadcast local emergency information--despite the fact that they must have EAS (Emergency Alert System) monitoring gear? I would think your mother's Flavoradio would be worse than useless in any emergency worse than a power outage these days for that reason.

[AUdubon5425]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

I don't know how often the Atlanta area or the New Orleans area (wherever your mother lives today) has power outages, but she will be ready for the next one, if and when...maybe....I would think your mother's Flavoradio would be worse than useless in any emergency worse than a power outage these days for that reason.

Well, I had picked up a second hand battery-operated weather radio with an alert for her about six months before she moved back home. It didn't have "SAME" but proved useful nonetheless - woke her up at least once for a tornado warning the next county over.

We have one AM station (WWL, which also simulcasts on FM) that is very dependable for news/weather coverage during the day, and although they've slipped a few times they've often covered weather events live in the wee hours. We used to have WDSU-TV 6 to fall back on - their audio signal was on the bottom of the FM dial.

Truthfully, I can count on my transistor and weather radios and the rotary dial phones when the power fails.

[compucat]

Originally Posted by electroking

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

I have two of those Flavoradios and you are right. They are a true example of a real transistor radio. The performance is typical of a six transistor set of the era. They are cheaply made but not flimsy and are quite dependable. Everyone should have at least one of these.

[ctc17]

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.

[Hemingray]

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)

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by ctc17

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.

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.