Kaito KA1102 AM/FM Shortewave Radio with SSB, Color Silver

I purchased the KA1102 a few weeks ago and have been pleased with its performance. I had read elsewhere that the quality was hit or miss and sure enough the first unit I received had issues with the speaker volume and the FM button required a very hard press to engage. Returning the radio was no problem with Amazon's automated system. I now have the replacement and it does not appear to have the flaws of the first one I received. Despite the quality issues in the first unit, the reception is impressive. I can listen to Radio Taiwan, China Radio International, and many other foreign broadcasts. Being relatively new to shortwave listening, my only comparison for this radio is with the Grundig FR200. The Grundig has a terribly annoying problem with drift and must be constantly tweaked to stay on the frequency. With the KA1102, I have not had any problems with drift and the digital frequency selection makes it easy to go where you want to go. Another interesting feature of the radio is the SSB functionality. While it doesn't allow you to choose upper or lower side band, it is still a handy feature for scanning for signals, because you can put the radio in SSB mode and start tuning until you hear a carrier tone. The telescoping antenna provides good reception, but you have to pick the most favorable location in your house and is no doubt affected by the type of structure and surrounding environment.Learning to use this radio will take a few minutes and it helps a lot if you read the manual. It is not particularly intuitive but once you figure it out, you won't have any problems at all. Charging the internal batteries is a bit unusual, as you have to manually select the number of hours to charge the batteries. They will not charge if you don't follow the proper steps. You also have to be careful to make sure it isn't set to charge if you put non-rechargeables in the unit. If you are new to shortwave listening as I am, you may find it helpful to buy the WRTH Guide World Radio TV Handbook 2011: The Directory of Global Broadcasting . Bottom line, I am pleased with this radio and I think it is a good value for the money.

I own an old Panasonic RF45 Shortwave radio and a Icom ICR10. The Panasonic reached his lifetime, and the Icom is a very expensive toy to carry it from one to another place. I look for this radio at many Internet reviews and I decided to buy it. In general lines, the're four viewpoint to qualify this radio: 1) Coverage 2) Reception 3) Selectivity and 4) Sound clarity and quality. 1) Coverage: In FM start from 70 Mhz to 108 Mhz. In SW start from 2.996 Mhz to 29.995 Mhz and in MW from 520 to 1710 Khz. The reception is good to very good, In FM and AM mode there's no problem with telescopic and ferrite antenna. In SW the supplied wire antenna helps to tune weak and far stations, but it's better with a dipole cupper wire antenna 'V' inverted type with coaxial RG58 cable. Selectivity: good to very good, but in some frecuencies the filters doesn't works too fine, for ex: you can hear the noise of near FM Station in some SW frecuencies. Sound clarity: at this point I rate this radio with 5 (or excellent) altough his small size speaker, you can hear at high level of volume without distort the sound. And with the supplied earphone you can hear FM Stereo with option of bass function to amplify the low frecuency sound (a matter of taste). Cons: The volume control is via Keypad, personally I prefer the knob style. The battery life: This radio comes with 3 AA NiMh 1300 mAH rechargable battery, it provide aprox 7 to 8 hour of running. My old RFB45 (with a larger speaker) reach aprox 16 to 20 hours of running time with 4 AA NiCd 700 mAH battery. The SSB mode is available only in P9 mode, that's means that you have 9 memory areas (P1 to P9) with 19 channels each and only in P9 memory area is available the SSB mode, if you are in SW band in P1 and press the SSB button for ex, an error msg blinks on the display. In general a good buy for the price, and good size to carry it to any place.

I have this radio for about a month. As a radio, it is much better than Grundig G6 Aviator and Eton 100 (that I also own). Unfortunately, it seems that manufacturing quality is pretty poor: after about a month of use the radio started having problems with the keyboard. It is necessary to press some buttons twice or more, with force. Pressing "power" to switch the radio on sometimes switches it on for a second and swithes it immediately off. Pressing some keys causes loud "click" noise in the speaker.Manual is EXTREMELLY poor and confusing. It cannot be dwnloaded from manufacturer's page. Make few copies and save. If manual is lost, you are lost :)Month later, March 9th, 2011. It is harder and harder to switch the radio on or off. Most frequently, pressing the Power button switches the radio on for a second and switches it immediately off. It seems that even for something that cost 60 bucks it is deteriorating too rapidly...