Whether you're out camping with family or out on a backcountry trip, listening to the radio will help pass some time when you're out in the wild. Few people enjoy living that bare minimum camping lifestyle and won't carry much, but a little luxury doesn't hurt. The Alpha Outpost SOL provides you with a shortwave radio so you can listen to NOAA weather stations, FM stations, and AM stations. The radio is a great little tool to have because you can charge it with a hand crank or the solar panel, it also has a flashlight and a USB charger outlet on it too.
The radio won't be able to transmit, but it could be useful in an emergency situation, and you don’t have to worry about running out of power. Now if you run into signal problems, here are some tips to help you get a better signal.
Being in a campground full of RVs and electric amenities can ruin your radio reception. If you have any electrical devices plugged in, they can generate electrical annoying noise and can possibly hurt your radio reception. To avoid this problem all you should do is turn off unnecessary items.
Turning off as many of electrical items as possible will lead to an all-out better reception. Below are some examples of items that can cause your radio reception to go bad.
-Laptops
-WiFi devices
-Satellite RV boxes
-Halogen lights,
-Light dimmer switches
If turning these items don't work, move your radio away from them.
In today's times, no one really pays attention to antennas but it's the one thing that matters the most with radios. The SOL radio has a built-in antenna rod. It may not be the prettiest thing on the radio, but moving it around and extending it to its full-length (9.5 inches) gives a notable reception improvement.
If you want to listen to a music radio station, most broadcasters use FM. FM stands for frequency modulation. FM radios work by having a special transformer inside that sits idle until you move your tuner to a certain frequency. Once that frequency changes between low and high your radio then outputs a voltage that makes your speaker/s produce a sound. FM signals frequently move horizontally, so, placing the antenna rod horizontally or diagonally will usually produce better sound than vertically.
Alternatively, another way of transmitting radio signals is AM. AM stands for amplitude modulation. An AM station will broadcast a signal at a constant frequency but will add the sound wave representing the actual audio to that base signal (radio frequency) resulting in the height (amplitude) of the wave changing accordingly.