Lowe Electronics - Kenwood R11 Portable Shortwave Radio

If you are a high-tech company as Lowe Electronics was, what do you do when a low-tech demo receiver turns up in the hope you will sell it?

You quietly give it away to one of the technicians who is simply happy to have it, in spite of the fact it fails in nearly every aspect of receiver design.

I still have it. It is the longest surviving shortwave radio. I like it because it's anti-tech, a bit punk.

The R-11 was manufactured in the early 1980's by Toshiba for Trio-Kenwood. The radio was dumped by Lowes as it was analogue and all the competition was digital in the portable sector.

The R-11 is just good fun. It doesn't cover all of the shortwave radio spectrum, it only has the AM mode for shortwave listening, the tuning is touchy, it drifts like driven snow but the audio quality is quite good thanks to a large speaker for its size.

And such a delight on FM compared to DAB.

The volume control is a slider on the left side and is under the left thumb when holding the radio. A three position slide tone control is located just below the volume control, so when holding the radio the right thumb and index finger are on the tuning knob and the left thumb is on the volume slide.

Band select buttons are lined up across the bottom and there is a red LED above each vertical band segment on the analog dial. This provides for quick band selection and is very handy for quickly scanning the bands.

The tuning meter is a real analog meter movement.

Sensitivity is good due to a clean background absent of synthesiser noise. You see, analogue had something going for it.

This is the Smart car of shortwave radios. Too much fun to get techie about.