Kaito KA1107 Dual Conversion Shortwave Radio with FREE T1 Shortwave Antenna
New King of the Dial and Pointer Radios
This is an \\"old fashioned\\" dial and pointer radio, lacking many of the features of a modern digital set... no preset stations, poor indication of the actual frequency that is tuned and no keyboard for entry of frequency. Somehow, it is still GREAT FUN to use!<br /><br />Band scanning has been a weak point of digital radios... the sound is usually muted while slewing through the frequency range, leaving just a tuning indicator light to show that a station has been found (most will not stop scanning on weak signals), or if not muted, a loud \\"chuffing\\" noise is produced as the frequencies are scanned. With this set you just turn the knob and listen for stations!<br />If you want to easily find, say the BBC on 5.975 Mhz a digital radio will get you there much faster, but for scanning the band to see what is on, the old dial and pointer still works quite well!<br /><br />This particular radio outperforms two others that I have used and reviewed here, due to its \\"double conversion\\" circuit, which  eliminates spurious signals (images). In that respect, its performance is close to that of much more expensive sets! The KA-1107 is more expensive than the Sangean SG-622 and Kaito WRX-911 (see my other reviews). As it is slightly larger than the Sangean, which is larger than the WRX-911, it is the best sounding of the three. Dial calibration is better on this set than on the other two. The clock, alarm and sleep timer are features lacking on the SG-622 and WRX-911.<br />It it my new favorite portable \\"dial and Pointer\\" set!