When I initially became aware of this radio, it cost around $100 and while it had an amazing feature set, it reportedly didn’t have the quality and performance of a radio that expensive. Now times have changed and Amazon is selling it to Prime customers for $58.49, and given that it has MW, FM, SW, CB, Air, Weather, VHF and UHF, and SSB, it seemed a good candidate for a travel radio that would actually fit in a shirt pocket. It’s not a new radio, first introduced in 2022. I did a bit of checking on the price:
This model is sold under the Retekess TR-110 and HanRongDa HRD-747 labels. The latter available from one seller on AliExpress for $44.05 with free shipping.
This will keep me busy until that Sansui F50 arrives.
I will of course compare it with the Raddy RF75A that covers some of the same ground frequency-wise, but not UHF, and of course it doesn’t handle SSB. The RF75A is not a particularly sensitive radio. I’m encouraged that the RF760 has an external antenna jack with adjustable attenuation, suggesting it might be more serious about shortwave. Also the ability to select from a range of bandwidths is a plus. There is a squelch too, and it has a thermometer. The manual says it can use an external antenna for MW but doesn’t guarantee the results (overloading?).
It has one unusual feature, a UBD band, an acronym for User Defined Band. A user can set up some portion of the VHF/UHF band, defined by a frequency range and demodulation mode.
It has a typical poorly translated Chinese to English language manual, featuring the “Rotary flying shuttle button.” And who knew the MW band was “54KHz to 1710 KHz” with the external antenna? [more to come on this one]
Red Flag
Yes, this is an Amazon frequently returned item. I couldn’t find exactly what criteria creates that flag, but some have suggested a return rate over 10%. So why would someone return it?
One reason might be the wire thin telescopic antenna that reportedly gets loose quickly and is easily bent. The biggest problem for the 1 star reviewers is that it simply didn’t work, followed by the complaint that it was too difficult to figure out.
The two-star reviewers said it was a crummy radio with poor performance. Users also reported that the tuning knob (the flying shuttle) broke or operated erratically after relatively little use.
We shall see! Of course if it’s broken, I’ll just send it back.
Apparently reading the manual is a must. The linked version of the manual has OCR data added to make it searchable.