A few mornings ago I was walking my dogs around the neighborhood, carrying my Icom ID-52a. There were some storm clouds bubbling up, so I decided, just as a curiosity, to test out the NOAA Weather Radio reception on the HT. Like many HTs today, the ID-52 has the seven NOAA weather channels pre-programmed. All you need to do is hit the MR button on the radio a few times to get to the weather radio channel menu and scroll through them until you get a signal.
For those of you unfamiliar with NOAA Weather Radio, it's a service of the National Weather Service that broadcasts continuous weather forecasts and emergency and severe weather warnings nationwide using a set of seven fixed FM frequencies. The chart below is taken from the ID-52 user manual, and it shows something interesting. The ID-52 has ten weather program channels, but NOAA only broadcasts on seven. What are the other three for? As you can see, WX08 & 09 are reserved for use by the Canadian Coast Guard, and #10 is an old NOAA radio beacon frequency. The manual also shows the frequencies used by Weatheradio Canada, a service that was shut down earlier this year.
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| Sacre bleu Canada, no weather radio for you! |
OK, back to the dog walk. I can normally receive Channel 1 (162.550) very clearly on my home weather radio. Channel 2 (162.400) can also be heard easily, but not as good as Channel 1. So I know at least one channel should be easily picked up by the ID-52. I was surprised to find that I wasn't hearing anything on any of the seven channels. At the time I figured I probably had a radio setting wrong, and maybe weather radio reception was turned off. This morning the dogs and I were back out on our walk and I decided to try weather radio reception again. Standing in the same spot as on the earlier walk, I tuned to the weather radio channels, and still nothing. Because I had not touched the radio since the previous walk, I still put it down to a setting in the radio. Then, as I moved the radio around trying to get the dog leashes shorted out, I got a brief reception 'blip' on Channel 1, and recognized the automated NOAA weather 'voice'. A-ha! Weather channel reception was turned on! The dogs and I took a different path on this walk, to get us to one of the high points in the neighborhood. Sure enough, Channel 1 was coming through, but very weak. The issue wasn't the radio, it was the stock Icom antenna.
I live in Fayette County, GA, just south of Atlanta (about 20 miles to the city line). The NWS broadcasts on Channel 1 from atop Stone Mountain, east of Atlanta. As the crow flies, it's about 31 miles between the transmitter and my HT. There's also a lot of terrain between me and Stone Mountain, so I understand why reception using a relatively short rubber duck isn't great. But do I have an antenna that can do better?
I got home and grabbed a small handful of HT antennas from my shack and headed out to the deck to test:
- A SignalStuff Signal Stick dual-band whip antenna
- A Diamond SRH77CA dual-band antenna
- A Diamond SRH320A tri-band antenna
- A Kenwood dual-band HT antenna - the same one that comes stock with the new TH-D75
- The Icom PA-S270 that comes stock with the ID-52
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| Left to right: Signal Stick whip, Diamond SRH77, Diamond SRH320, Kenwood & Icom |
The results of the test were not surprising - the longer the antenna, the better the reception. The winner was the Signal Stick, pulling in strong signals on channels 1, 2 and 4. The undisputed loser was the stock Icom 'rubber duck' that came with the radio. The Kenwood was only slightly better, maybe a reception bar or two on the marginal channels. Both of these antennas have been around for a long time and are well regarded, but they just don't offer the reception capabilities of longer tuned antennas. The 'Goldilocks' antenna, and in my mind the overall winner, is the Comet SRH320. It's short and light enough that it doesn't interfere with the ID-52's mission of being easy to carry and still offering very good performance. While the stock ID-52 antenna could only pull in a few bars, the Diamond was showing a full strength receive performance.
So there you have it - I've confirmed the obvious. But what this test does tell me is that if I'm going to rely on my ID-52 (or any other HT that can pull in the NOAA Weather Radio channels) I'm going to have to bring along a better antenna.
W8BYH out
