Residential Grade Radios and Features

Disaster Gear offers a broad variety of radios with features to meet most any need.  They include:

Tone alarm: The National Weather Service will send a 1050 Hz tone alarm before most warning and many watch messages are broadcast. The tone will activate all the receivers which are equipped to receive it, even if the audio is turned off. This is especially useful for warnings which occur during the night when most people are asleep. 

SAME technology: SAME, or Specific Alert Message Encoding allows you to specify the particular area for which you wish to receive alerts. Most warnings and watches broadcast over NOAA Weather Radio are county-based or independent city-based (parish-based in Louisiana), although in a few areas of the country the alerts are issued for portions of counties.

Properly programmed, a SAME receiver will respond only to alerts issued for the area (or areas) you have selected. This minimizes the number of “false alarms” for events which might be a few counties away from where you live. 

Selectable alerting of events: While SAME allows you to specify a particular area of interest, some receivers allow you to turn off alarms for certain events which might not be important to you. For example, if you live in a coastal county, but not right at the beach, you might not care about Coastal Flood Warnings. This feature may also be called "Event Blocking" or "Defeat Siren". 

Battery backup: Since power outages often occur during storms, having a receiver with battery backup can be crucial. However, unless you have a portable unit which you will use away from other power sources, an AC power connection is recommended to preserve battery life. 

Hand crank: Many of our radios offer the option of hand cranking for power.

External antenna jack: While most receivers come with a whip antenna which can usually be extended out from the unit, depending on your location you may need an external antenna to get good reception. Some receivers come with an external antenna jack which will allow you to connect to a larger antenna (which can be indoors or outdoors).

External device jack (special needs): Some radios have a jack to plug-in external notification devices, such as strobe lights or bed shakers, which can be useful for those with special needs.