Little Radios: Raddy RF760

Bless the Amazon driver’s heart for getting my Raddy RF760 radio to me about 12 hours before the promised 10 PM delivery time.

Unboxing

I took some photos. One can’t do an unboxing without a box.

The box comes with a radio

It comes with:

• Radio
• Manual
• Wire antenna
• Ear buds
• USB C charging cable
• Carry bag
• BL-5C battery

Little Radios

Here the RF760 appears with some other little radios: Jo, Meg, Beth, Amy…. Oops, sorry, wrong story. From top to bottom, left to right: Degen DE15, Raddy RF760, Raddy RF75A, HanRongDa HRD-701, Tecsun Q3, Tecsun PL-118.

These are some radios I’m considering for comparisons (not the two Tecsuns that are FM only), along with the Kaito KA29, HanRongDa HRD-757 and the Zhiwhis ZWS-603. Early on I’ll want to calibrate my expectations and assign the RF760 into a class. Is it more like the HanRongDa HRD-757 because of its VHF/UHF coverage and external antenna support?

Initial Impressions

My first impression is that I’m not going to return it to Amazon. It’s a radio and it seems to do what it is advertised to do. In my first quick check, I picked up CHU from Montreal on 7850 kHz with the telescopic antenna. My second impression is that the display light doesn’t stay on very long (I seem to recall the manual says 10 seconds). My third impression is that the speaker is (should say I it?) awful. The smaller RF75A speaker is profoundly better. The RF760 audio experience is much improved with a good set of headphones.

While I would describe the display as readable outdoors, some of the type for options was just too small for me to read. I have 20-20 vision corrected. I’m going to have to add a magnifying glass to my radio kit bag.

The RF760 didn’t produce much on MW, as expected from a radio of small size with an internal antenna. It will be interesting to see how it performs with an external antenna. FM performance, however, was quite good.

I took a quick look at shortwave. The radio’s auto search seems to work well. It covers all frequencies within a band, not just the International shortwave meter bands. I picked up CHU on 7850 and 14670, plus Radio Exterior de España on 12030 around 2:45 PM local time (EDT). WWV was good on 15 MHz.

I picked up a rather nice signal of IRBA Media Radio Sama via Woofferton, UK, 15510 kHz at 18:44 UTC on the telescopic antenna. The language is Arabic.

To Come

The RF760 has a ton of options. I particularly want to see what SSB looks and sounds like. I also want to try out the external antenna on MW.

And of course, I want to compare it with other small radios, and if it does well, with some not so small radios.