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Reviews For: Radio Shack HTX-242

Category: Transceivers: VHF/UHF+ Amateur Base/Mobile (non hand-held)

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Review Summary For : Radio Shack HTX-242
Reviews: 63MSRP: 249.99
Description:
10/45 Watt 2-Meter Mobile FM Amateur Transceiver
Product is not in production
More Info: http://www.radioshack.ca/en/templates/ProdTemp.asp?dept%5Fid=92
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00634
KE6TNN Rating: 2002-06-13
Problem child Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I've been a HTX-212 owner for seven years and a HTX-242 owner for over three. The squelch has to be turned almost completely clockwise in order for it to work satisfactorily. The speaker volume is entirely too low to be heard while driving. My 242's receives the local repeaters at two S levels below what my 212 does. This I discovered after suffering through lousy reception for the past few years. I had thought that it was just the area that I moved to, but swapping in the 212 in my car gives great results. The function button sticks, and sounds like I'm breaking something every time I push it. The VFO dial often requires about six clicks to finally change frequency. This is even after I sent it in for warranty repair. They sent it back in the same condition. The dealer had the nerve to demand $80 for the "repair", even though he had proof that it was under warranty. Compared to my 212, this radio's quality is a great disappointment.
WD0CT Rating: 2002-04-02
Fairly good Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Receive sensitivity is only fair/good. Selectivity could use some help, but most of it's competitors are in this boat too. GOOD front end passband filters should be in any 2 meter radio.
No problems except some lamps burnt out on display. They appear to be very hard to get to.
I still own it and plan to keep it.
KB1FHJ Rating: 2002-03-18
could make a better choice Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
Not a bad starter radio, but the thing refuses to work at temps below 32° f. Save yourself some agrivation and buy a japanese model from a japanese maker
KB1GNI Rating: 2002-03-18
Good solid radio Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I've had this radio for about a year since getting my ticket. No real problems with it other than twice it has lost all of the presets for some reason and had to be reprogrammed. The radio seems to be a little sensitive to low voltage conditions and will not transmit on high power if the input voltage is low. In the car I find that the engine has to be running to get high power most of the time. The controls are a little cumbersome to work with and require the manual to be handy unless you have a really good memory. It would be nice to be able to program it with a computer interface.
Considering the price, some minor shortcomings are easily overlooked. I have received consistantly good on-air reports and it seems to be put together pretty well. You can program odd repeater splits, handy for ISS QSOs. PL tones are included. The remote controls on the hand mike are useful, especially mobile.
I'd buy another one.
KC0IZV Rating: 2002-02-13
Good radio for the Price! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
After passing my Tech licenses I got lucky and found that this radio was on clearance at Radio Shack for $120. So I purchased it the next day, and was on the air with it after being granted my call sign. I?ve used this radio almost everyday for the past year and a half that I?ve owned it. I take it mobile using my Radio Shack 5/8-wave antenna; also use it as a base in my home, and during the summer at work I take it on the tractor with me. This radio has been through a lot and keeps working. I have great signal reports while working repeaters mobile several miles out. There are a lot of features I probably will never use with this radio, but that?s usually the case with most radios.

Well this is a great 2-meter radio for the price and I recommend buying one if you have the chance!

73,
KC0IZV
KB1FFT Rating: 2002-02-09
Great Unit !!! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I bought my radio in yr.2000 and it has worked flawlessly. I own this unit and a HTX-212 and both are still working great. All my equipment thus far is Radio Shack an I've got nothing bad to say about them. I own a 202 handheld that is still working great so all my experience w/ Radio Shack is great. I'm able to hit repeaters well over a hundred miles away from my home w/ the 242 using a Hy-Gain antenna vertical.
In closing i would say radio Shack does a good job building their units and I've got nothing but praise for them.
KC4FWC Rating: 2002-01-02
Great power amp design Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I give it a "4" because I had to fix it first! Well, the fellow told me the "power module" was bad. It only put out about 100 milliwatts. Come to find out, there is no module! There is only one final transistor capable of 50 watts (great design.. you rarely see this in mobile units).. I checked the transistor, and found there was no DC voltage on the collector. Come to find out a loose solder joint on the +12 VDC feed (an RF choke) was the problem. Works like a champ now. But I turned the low power to 5 watts, and the high to 25. Runs cooler. Easy to modify out of band (illegal)... not that I've done it... Only gripe is the channel/VFO knob is a little whacko, doesn't always change the frequency every click. Other than that, great radio for the price they have come down to.
WB2CIR Rating: 2001-11-28
Satisfied Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
Dear YLs and OMs,

As for the review, the available functions are sufficient for me. You're going to want to keep the manual in the car, for adjusting Scan Delay and other functions you don't often access. Most functions are hidden behind the Function button - one of the buttons on the front panel. The good news is that the radio has a Scan Delay function, and many other flexibilities.

I've heard complaints that the microphone, filled with buttons, does not include the Function button. Finally, I agree this is a drawback, since the Function button is needed for any scanning.

This radio can silently scan, placing active frequencies into unused memories - I love that. Of course, this radio will * not * scan, simultaneously, in 20 kHz steps from 145.11 to 146.01 and then 15 kHz steps from 146.01 to 147.600. Therefore, if you don't want to miss anything, you have to scan in 5 kHz steps.

Anyway, you're probably going to be stuck scanning in 5 kHz steps when the radio is automatically putting used frequencies into memories (as determined by the squelch). If there is a repeater on 146.85, the radio will place 146.845 in a memory, 146.850 in the next memory, and 146.855 in the next memory. (Any radio with this function will probably do the same thing.) The audio is silenced while this function is working, but the squelch is still used to determine what frequencies are active. My preference is to turn the squelch up to maximum, so Cable TV radiation will not be saved into memory locations. After a few channels are saved, I go back, deleting the off-channel frequencies, and move the "real" channels to the first unused memory locations.

Maybe one day, I'll put my memories into numerical order.

(I should double check, but I seem to recall the ridiculous lack of a 15 kHz scanning step, including a normal band-scan.)

It's just like Radio Shack to give us 40 channels, hi hi. Here in the Forests of Central Pennsylvania, 40 channels of memory are sufficient. If you mobile around Long Island, 40 channels will not be sufficient.

73, -Neil / wb2cir-
KC0LBZ Rating: 2001-09-17
Good radio. Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I picked up a used HTX-242 from EBay for $110. After cleaning it up (a previous owner had spilled juice or soda down the front, so it had sticky controls) I've been very pleased with it.

We have a lot of repeaters in the Denver area, and I've been able to reach many of them. I have it installed in a minivan, with a 12" Comet mag-mount antenna. Even on the low (~10W) setting, I find I only drop out when I'm going through the "canyons" downtown; switching to high (~45W) brings me right back in. The repeater I hit most often is west of Boulder, and I live 45 mi away in Parker. I've also been using it with a 5/8 wave vertical at home on the low setting (the PS I have at the moment is only good for 5A), with excellent results.

The one problem I had was with the repeater-scan-and-store function, and that was just unclear documentation. It wasn't clear from the manual or the reviews here, but while it stores the repeater frequencies, it does *not* store the CTCSS tones. So it's great for *finding* the repeaters, but you still need a directory for the tones.

I did encounter the "lock on transmit" issue, but I had my magnet-mount antenna sitting about a foot away from the radio at the time. When I moved it farther away, the problem vanished. It's probably due to RF pickup via the mike cable.

In all, I like this radio a lot (even if it is my first 2M ever), and I'll probably get another from EBay while they're still available.
KG4LIZ Rating: 2001-09-16
worth it??? no! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
A ham showed me his radio shack and I said I have to get it. Well sooner or later around December of 2001 i purchased and it couldnt even transmit??? i mean come on....whats a radio that doesnt transmit...i should have just bought a reciever..well i returned it....looks sharp...but in the inside its not worth it all...dont get it...save your self the time and the money

danny kg4liz