What you see is a circuit board, a battery (lower left) and the speaker lower right.
The story starts with how weak the speaker sounds. I thought some earphones might help but they didn’t; in fact, I could barely hear anything on earphones. Perhaps an obvious flaw in the earphone jack could be found. Opening the radio proved an adventure. One can see a rather substantial screw pillar on the lower right; this is coming from the back of the radio. Three screws came out with some effort, but the 4th screw just spun around with no effort. It turns out that the screw head was broken off (not by me), leaving the rest of a very long screw holding both parts of the case firmly together. The only solution that worked was to use a fine-tipped soldering iron to heat the screw enough to melt the plastic to release it.
This little trek started when I found an old weather sensor in a drawer. These come with weather stations to show what the temperature is remotely (or wind speed, humidity or rainfall).
The specific FCC ID for my sensor is RNERF100MTX, sold by Chaney Instrument Co. under the ACURITE brand. I found a manual and learned that the device transmits in the ISM (Industrial, Scientific and Medical) band that spans 433.05 – 434.79 MHz. Weather sensors typically operate around 433.92 MHz, but the exact frequency can vary depending on the manufacturer and device.
I also learned from my research that such devices use simple off/on encoding. That’s why my original title, “Listening to the Weather,” had to be changed. I have a few devices that can receive the ISM band frequencies, but I selected an RTL-SDR dongle since there wasn’t going to be anything to listen to.
I have an ATS25 max-Decoder that I’ve used some, and struggled with some. I keep plugging away trying to get some use from it. I’ve picked up some stations, gotten FT4 to work, listened to SSB, and decoded CW training transmissions. I currently have firmware version 4.2 AIR, 23 March 2025. The user manual is much improved with this release.
Wi-Fi
After installing the 3/23/2025 software, Wi-Fi wouldn’t connect to my home network. The entries indicated that they had been configured (blue) or a connection was being attempted (yellow). I found that I had to go into the Access Point selection, DELETE the existing credentials, and add them back before it would connect. It is possible that I lost some data due to problems I had with the last firmware installation and this was the reason for the failure.
Daylight Savings Time (Summer Time)
I wanted to set the clock for daylight savings time. Most of my radios are set to UTC and I didn’t know exactly how to set that either. I found the Si47XX for Radio Experimenters group on Facebook, and one of the commenters there explained the process: Press the RETRO button on the main screen, then SET, then CITY. When you select the city, click CHANGE, then EDIT and OK. Time offset will be flashing in the upper right corner of the screen and can be changed with the encoder knob. Click OK when done, then =>, EXIT, => and finally EXIT.
Antenna switch
Make sure the antenna switch is set correctly. On the max-Decoder, the AUTO setting is the way to go. You can waste a lot of time if the switch is set wrong.
For the time being, there are pre-tariff Chinese radios for sale in the US at reasonable prices, and I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to review. I came upon on this new-condition Degen DE1131 Touch Screen Controlled Portable AM/FM/SW Digital radio on eBay for $19.99 including shipping from Electronnix. I’ll link to the eBay listing since there are multiples for sale (and they are offered on Amazon for $19.98 from the same seller).
Degen DE1131 Touch Screen Controlled Portable AM/FM/SW Digital radio
This is a radio I looked at some years ago, and rejected because of its original price ($79). It’s a an eleven and a half-year-old radio introduced in November 2013, and I guess they’re finally blowing them out now.
I’m no fortuneteller and I don’t have any special expertise in international trade, but I can report what I saw today.
I ordered a Chinese-made WWVB time signal receiver module from a Canadian seller on eBay. It cost $9.13. Here’s a screen shot from my order on eBay:
WWVB receiver module
When I went back to check the order today, there was a note on the seller’s listing that it had been updated:
That’s about a 1000% increase.
Instead of raising the price, some international eBay sellers are just adding the tariff to the shipping cost (which I prefer because it makes it clear what’s going on and makes it easier to do price comparisons). Here’s an example of a radio I have:
$27.99 radio with $110 shipping.
Or how about $505 to ship a Tecsun S8800 from Hong Kong?
The title of this blog post is a play on a trade policy called “de minimus,” that allows Americans to order things from other countries, up to one package per day valued up to $800, with no import duties. That policy ends for China on May 2. The shipping country isn’t important; it’s the country of origin that determines the tariff.
My WWVB clock module should have shipped 3 days ago by eBay’s standard 2-day shipping policy, but it hasn’t. Supposedly eBay international shipping rolls up all taxes and duties into the selling price. So whether it will ever ship is an open question in my mind.
Update:
The eBay seller was kind enough to answer my query, informing me that the package had arrived in the US prior to the tariffs going into effect. It’s scheduled for delivery on May 9.c
Update 2:
I had a misunderstanding about how tariffs are working. The article above is correct as it stands, but it talks about two individual sellers who ship internationally direct to customers.
AliExpress is a supplier that I use for some radio-related items. Their model is to aggregate a number of orders into one shipment, which passes US customs and is assessed on the total value of the shipment. Once customs is cleared, the large shipment is broken up into individual packages and put in the mail stream. While there is indeed a 145% tariff, there is no $100 minimum per order or per item when items are shipped this way.
I thought I would try out the Grok AI today, so I asked Microsoft Copilot to make up a query to test it out. Copilot knows things I’m interested in and it came up with this challenge:
Analyze the impact of the recent solar storm on global radio communications. Include specific effects on WWVB signal reception, shortwave propagation, and satellite systems.
Copilot explained that its question requires current event awareness, demands technical analysis and tests depth of access.
AI generated content may appear occasionally in articles and will be denoted with the [robot emoji] symbol. Content comes most often from Microsoft Copilot, but may also come from Perplexity, ChatGPT, Duck.ai, Grok or Deep Seek.
[robot emoji] symbol. Content comes most often from Microsoft Copilot, but may also come from Perplexity, ChatGPT, Duck.ai, Grok or Deep Seek.