Radios I Have Known

A quick look: Roberts Sports 925 AM/FM/LW radio

Roberts Sports 925

The name is a happy coincidence, but the real reason I bought this radio was for longwave coverage during trips to Europe. While the Tecsun DSP series of radios cover the longwave band (153 to 279 kHz, not used in the Western Hemisphere for broadcasting), they don't receive those signals well. I was looking for the Roberts R9924, which had a very good reputation for longwave and mediumwave reception, but it's been discontinued. I was able to get the Sports 925 from an online merchant in England via eBay.

It's a nice package. It's strictly analog, so tuning can involve some guesswork. The radio is clearly aimed at AM listening in the United Kingdom, as you can see from the indications of various national-coverage frequencies on the dial. There is FM reception, including a nice rigid telescoping antenna. While FM reception is moderately sensitive, front-end overload is a real problem and, at best, I can rate this radio as fair for FM reception.

For longwave and mediumwave reception, though, it's another story. A longwave station that should be receivable throughout western Europe is Radio France-Inter at 162 kHz. The Tecsuns could barely get it even in France. This radio could get it, with some noise, in Leiden, in the Netherlands. In France itself, France-Inter was almost like a local in most spots. Also easily receivable in France were RMC at 216 kHz and RTL from Luxembourg on 234 kHz. In Leiden, English-language programming was readily available from BBC Radio 4 on 198 kHz. Unfortunately, the BBC has (thanks to incredibly stupid right-wing budget-cutting) discontinued broadcasting the World Service to Western Europe on 648 kHz. But, had it still been broadcasting, I'm sure this radio could have received it well.

Reportedly, the Roberts line of radios are made by Sangean, and this radio has many of the characteristics one comes to expect from a Sangean radio of this size: good audio quality from the speaker, good resistance to interference, and good sensitivity on AM, though mediocre on FM. It runs on two AA batteries. The analog tuning can be fussy at times, and the audio bandwidth is a little bit narrower than it should be for comfortable listening during long periods of time.

But, overall, it's a good travel companion if you need or want coverage of both longwave and mediumwave broadcasting in parts of the world where that's useful.

Posted August 4, 2012