I sure like these newer Shortwave radios flooding the market. There are some good ideas and some bad ones. but the one were talking about today, the Retekess TR113 is for sure a decent radio.
After the Choyong snafu, I didn’t think I could get a decent SW radio unless having to spend some serious cash on the Tecsun 501x. Which while I would have, sure didn’t want to. So after looking at the Raddy and seeing the update problems with that found out Raddy had a brother by Retekess, the RT113. So I ordered it and waited with fingers crossed.
I got it yesterday, (7/24/24) and was immediately awed by it. First, it comes wrapped in a box. A rather fine wrapping job for a Chinese radio. That was my first impression. The second was the weight and feel. Its a heavy beast! And for sure very well built. This isn’t some Ebay crap seller fly by night product by any means. It’s a beafy, heavy, well built unit.
Opened the box and got all the accessories out and after readying the very small manual figured out how to unlock the radio and program it. First I put in 89.7 WayFM and wow, it came in! This is unheard of inside my house considering I have a metal roof and radio signals just don’t get in very well. Next I turned the dial on the Medium wave (AM) with the stock internal antenna and got both KRLD 1080 AM out of Dallas AND WBAP 820 AM Out of Ft. Worth! I struggled to get WBAP outside on most radios.
So I charged it up, read the manual a few times, argued with it to get the back lite to stay on and change the display colors. Hey Retekess, Orange, Red and White back lights on the display 1 would be sexy on this radio. So I charged it again and played with more buttons and finally somewhat figured the unit out. I was able to program the Hunt County Sheriff channel in the radio and receive traffic on it but very quickly realized without CTCSS/DCS programming this feature wasn’t going to work very well with all the interference from all the surrounding agencies. Also, it does not decode DMR or P25 modulation. Thus the spectrum this radio has between 450-999 MHz will be utterly worthless.
So tonight I put the radio on the long wire antenna outside and wow, the Shortwave side did not disappoint any! Got really strong and clear signals from WWCR on 4840, 5935, 7490 and 5890 KHz. Just beautiful reception far superior than what I get on my Tecsun PL-330 and Grundig G9. I was also able to receive the Time & Standards frequency for the atomic clock out of Colorado on two stations. Totally unheard of on other radios. I was also able to listen to WBCQ 9330 KHz for several hours until they went off air. If you didn’t know WBCQ is located in the State of Maine. Well it was coming in like it was in my own State of Texas. As a last text I put it on 11175 USB USAF Global HF net. Its wasn’t too long and I was hearing Guam on the net. I then put it on 27,385 LSB (CB Channel 38) And was tuning in a little DX even.
The problem with this radio is that it has a whole lot of wasted radio spectrum. Retekess didn’t do the research when slapping in the frequency spectrum. So here in the US of A 225-380 MHz is the US Government Aviation band and it operates in AM mode. However in China this is FM and used for personal and business communications. IN CHINA! Texas thank God isn’t China and that spectrum is wasted and useless. The radio also does not decode Digital modulations. So NO APCO-25, DMR, YSF, DSTAR, NXDN or IDAS. None of that which is 75% of our Business and Amateur radio in the US. There isn’t a lot of Analog left in America. It does receive AM Aviation on the 108-136 MHz band and Ham repeaters in 2 meter, 440, 220 and even 900 MHz. Just no CTCSS/DCS Decode or DMR. Which in the event of an emergency is doable. But no FM on Citizens Band. So yeah, it really lacks an awful lot. I would put it in a disaster bug out kit but I wouldn’t rely on it solo for everything. Really its a terrific SW Radio/Weather Radio/Broadcast radio but beyond that, its not worth it.
For a Tornado, Hurricane and flood this could be a decent radio to pick information up from but as a stand alone emergency radio? Forget it! IF the bands were fixed to accommodate the North American user and maybe even had some Transmit options on FRS/GMRS it would be worth the $228 I paid for it. Currently its well over priced. Settings like temperature are in Metric and not fixable for US Markets. The radio definitely needs a frequency spectrum upgrade before I would recommend buying it.