Radios I Have Known

Zenith Royal 92 "Weather Commander" AM/FM/weather band radio

Zenith Royal 92 AM/FM/weather-band radio

In 1968, Zenith released what may have been the last U.S.-made and designed AM/FM radio, the Royal 92. It looks very similar to the Royal 76/820 "Symphony" model, and the AM and FM reception circuitry appears identical. Aside from minor design tweaks, such as a different font on the tuning dial and a different speaker grille, the big difference for the Royal 92 was the addition of weather-radio reception capability. Hence the name "Weather Commander".

AM and FM performance are nearly identical to the Royal 76s that I have, which means it's a good, well-rounded portable radio.

Weather radio was relatively new in 1968. The National Weather Service was just beginning to roll out a network of stations, all broadcasting at 162.55 MHz. This radio tunes that frequency, but doesn't tune the six additional frequencies that were added later as the network of stations became denser. (There are five weather-radio stations in the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, two of which are dedicated entirely to marine weather forecasts and conditions.)

Thus, the weather-radio capability for this radio is limited, but it does work. It's actually crystal-controlled. If one wanted to change the channel, one would have to change the crystal.

While this radio, like the Royal 76/820, is built with lots of metal shielding, the component layout was changed considerably from the 76/820. It's more difficult to work on as a result. I need to recalibrate this one because, on the AM dial, it only tunes to about 1560, meaning I can just barely get local station KFRC at 1550. But doing that recalibration will mean taking the radio apart to get to the one adjustment that's necessary, in an obscure corner of the chassis.

It's easy enough to search for a brief article about this radio that appeared in a 1968 issue of Popular Science. That article indicated a suggested retail price of almost $90, $20 more than the Royal 76. While this particular model lasted a year, it was one of the first of many weather-band radios made by Zenith and other manufacturers.

Posted August 7, 2011