Strong Signals
First Impressiosn

Maycom AR-108
AR-108 image

by
Rich Wells, N2MCA

Micro-size receivers are all the rage these days. With microprocessor physical size and power drain shrinking while their performance continues to increase, it is the dawn of a new age which sees more and more people toting around various consumer electronics devices from cell phones to pagers to personal radios.

To be as handy and unobtrusive as possible, such devices are shrinking in size at a phenomenal rate. Not to be left out of the micro receiver market, Maycom has recently introduced a niche radio which caters to the commercial airband and weather enthusiasts who want to stay in touch with minimal fuss.

What follows are my personal impressions regarding the features and performance of this receiver. This, in no way, should be viewed as an endorsement to purchase this radio nor is it intended to discourage anyone from buying it. I have no personal or business relations with Maycom Co., Ltd. These are simply thoughts offered to my fellow hobbyists who may be interested in purchasing this particular radio or learning more about it.

A lot of hard work and effort has gone into the testing and writing of this review. I would appreciate it if every effort is made to keep this document whole with me as the original author. Of course, it doesn't hurt that this document is copyrighted and therefore protected by US law and international treaties governing intellectual property. Except for personal use, and for the sake of brief passages quoted in reviews and given appropriate credit, no part of this work may be reproduced in any forms or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.

Thank you and enjoy!

Rich Wells
N2MCA
Strong Signals web site

This document contains the following sections:
  • What You Get
  • Model Tested
  • Basic Specs
  • Operating Manual
  • Construction and Physical
  • Pictures
  • Antenna
  • Features
  • VFO
  • Memory
  • Scanning
  • Searching
  • Priority
  • VHF Performance
  • Ranking
  • Things I Like
  • Things I Would Change
  • Summary
  • Special Note
  • Update - June 21, 1999
    • What You Get
  • AR-108 Air/Weather Band Receiver
  • Plastic belt clip
  • Operating Manual
    • Model Tested
  • Serial #: 990103xx
  • FCC ID: N5MMAYCOMAR108
  • Made in Korea
    • Basic Specs
    Channels 99
    Scan Banks 1
    Search Bands 0
    Coverage 108-137 162.40-162.55 MHz
    Scan 10 chan/sec
    Search 25 step/sec
    Steps 25 kHz, 1 MHz
    Modes AM & FM
    Sensitivity As specified in the manual :
    AM: 1 µV for 10 dB NQ
    FM: 0.25 µV for 12 dB SINAD
    Conversion Double
    IFs 1=21.4 MHz 2=455 kHz
    Priority 1 channel
    Search skip 0 frequencies
    Auto-Store No
    S-meter Yes
    Delay No
    Lockout Per channel
    Attenuator No
    Lock Keypad
    Tone codes None
    Computer intf No
    Rotary controlNo
    Channel count No
    Data skip No
    Clock No
    Timers No
    Weather Yes
    Weather Alert No
    Light Display
    Power 3.0 V internal, 7-20 V external
    Audio 120 mW @ 8 ohms, 10% THD
    Size 2.3"(W) x 3.3"(H) x 1.0"(D)
    58 (W) x 85 (H) x 26.5 (D) mm
    Weight 98.5g/3.5oz
    Memory non-volatile?
    Operating Manual
  • The operating manual is much like a pamphlet and rather crude in many respects
  • Spelling and grammar mistakes are everywhere, not to mention poor sentence structure which, altogether, makes it quite a challenge to learn proper operation
  • So be ready to read the manual and then "wing it" when it comes to operating this radio. You'll need to do some experimentation on your own
  • The first useful description is of the LCD and all of its indicators
  • This is followed by a decent description of the physical features of the radio
  • The next section begins to describe the "Front Panel Features" which is where things start to get cryptic
  • It covers the operation of VFO, how to write memory (you'll need to to break out the secret decoder ring to break this one) and operation of the dual watch (priority) function
  • A small section follows which covers the power saver and scan delay
  • Installation of the batteries is then detailed which is followed by a pretty useless sectional paragraph simply titled "To Receive"
  • The last section details the radio's specifications which provides fairly decent coverage (except for Selectivity which is just listed as "50dB Min.")
  • Overall, a poor effort that speaks of an attempt to rush it out the door (or keep technical writing costs to a minimum) and written by someone who has never actually used the radio itself
    • Construction and Physical
  • The 108 is another micro-sized receiver which is very similar in size to Icom's IC-R2
  • The radio case, controls and antenna are all black except for the buttons, most keys and dust flaps which are dark gray. One key, in the upper left hand corner is white
  • Overall, it appears quite well built and very solid
  • Attention to detail on the physical design is evident by noting the many uniform seams and how they are all mate flush with each other
  • The front panel consists of the LCD on top (flanked by the single white key), followed underneath by a row of keys with the speaker grill rounding out the bottom
  • Key lettering appears in light gray which cuts down on contrast but is still fairly easy to read. Secondary function lettering appears below each key in white
  • The top panel houses the usual volume and squelch control along with the SMA antenna, microphone (?) and speaker jacks, the latter two of which are covered by a singular dust flap
  • The volume control, atop the squelch, has a small white dot printed on top aiding in visual inspection of its setting
  • The squelch control simply has a small notch cut into it which makes visual inspection much more difficult
  • The left panel houses the Function and squelch Monitor keys. Like the IC-R2, some genius picked the far smaller of the two keys to be used for the Function key which is used heavily on a receiver with minimal keys. Luckily, this radio's Function key is much easier to press compared to the R2's
  • The right panel houses the DC power jack which is thoughtfully covered by a rubber dust flap and nicely recessed into the body
  • Another nice touch is the power jack's polarity imprinted just below the jack itself
  • On the back panel we see the anchor for the provided belt clip at the top, followed underneath by the usual ID sticker followed by the battery case cover
  • The provided belt clip is plastic and should hold up decently if not overflexed. There is a cutout near the top which would allow the use of a custom hand strap if desired. Also, there is a keyhole style notch in the middle which would, I guess, allow you to mount your radio on the wall ;-)
  • The bottom panel houses a slide switch which is used to lock the downward sliding battery cover securely in place
  • Recent ads in electronic and radio magazines have pictured FRS radios from Cherokee which bear a remarkable likeness to the 108. Not too hard then to picture why the top panel has a microphone jack and the front panel has a small offset hole from the speaker grill which is usually used for a microphone pickup as well
    • Pictures
  • IC-R2 & AR-108
  • LCD & keys
  • Huge FUNC button!
    • Antenna
  • The provided antenna is 3.25" long and terminates in an SMA jack
  • It appears to be a simple coil surrounded by a plastic case
  • And only semi-flexible
  • It does appear to be well tuned for the AM air band and also performs quite well on the VHF weather band
    • Features
  • With a small radio comes a small LCD and this one is a bit smaller than I care for
  • While the frequency digits are decently sized (but nothing to applaud), the various indicators sprinkled across the display are positively microscopic
  • Luckily, the display has good contrast which helps offset this negative aspect
  • Viewing angle holds up very well to the sides and from below but is best viewed from above for the added contrast
  • Unfortunately, the LCD cover is curved which means it is very likely to reflect nearby light sources off of one or more portions of the cover thus obliterating the LCD details. I found myself constantly twisting and turning the radio to read various indicators during testing
  • There is an S-meter which consists of 10 segments (beneath the frequency display) and a BUSY indicator (beside the frequency)
  • With squelch set minimally and no signal being received, the S-meter typically reads 3-5 units. When an actual signal is received, the BUSY indicator comes on and the S-meter reads accordingly
  • It appears the S-meter likes to overread too
  • Next to the S-meter is a 4 level battery meter!
  • Like most receivers of this size, power drain appears to be minimal since I have used this receiver for a number of hours and the battery meter is still display a "full" level
  • The manual notes that when the battery level gets low, the meter will "twinkle"
  • There is a nice LCD light which provide pretty good illumination from green LEDs on both sides
  • A single keypress of the backlight key will turn on the LEDs for 4 seconds and any keys pressed after this will also reset this 4 second timer
  • Even better, pressing and holding the backlight key for more than a second will lock it on until you manually turn it off!
  • Key are decently sized and spaced, and provide good feedback overall
  • There is a key beep function which can be enabled or disabled
  • If the key beep is enabled, the radio emits a five sequence melody when powered on
  • Audio power is OK on FM and marginal on AM signals
  • The volume can be turned up to about 60-70% before distortion begins
  • Audio fidelity is good on both AM and FM signals
  • No squelch tail was detected on AM signals
  • A press and hold of the left panel MON keys instantly breaks the squelch to help detect weak signals
  • To help conserve power, the 108 comes with a power saver which can be manually enabled and disabled. When enabled, the PS indicator appears on the display and when it kicks in, after roughly 2 seconds of no receive activity, PS blinks
  • There is a keypad lock which, once enabled, displays the key indicator on the LCD and locks out all keys except for FUNCTION, LOCK, MONITOR and light.
  • No power-on resume was detected
    • VFO
  • The VFO can be operated in air or weather band mode
  • In air band mode, an 'A' appears on the far left side of the LCD
  • In weather band, a 'W' is displayed
  • To switch between modes, the white WR/AI key is pressed
  • Also in weather band mode, its not really a VFO but more like a service scan since there are only 10 stations to pick from and the frequencies are not displayed (you see 'Wh-01' through 'Wh-10')
  • Since the weather frequencies are not displayed, it makes it tough to manually select a weather channel. But it appears the numbering scheme being used follows the US channelization (1=162.550, 2=162.400, 3=162.475, 4=162.425, 5=162.450, 6=162.500, 7=162.525)
  • As for the contents of the remaining 3 channels, who knows since the manual does not specify them. Perhaps they are Canadian?
  • In air band mode, the VFO functions as one would expect by being able tune the receiver within the 108-137 MHz range
  • The AM receive mode can not be altered but that shouldn't be necessary either
  • The default step size is 25 kHz but this can be changed to 1 MHz to help tune around more quickly
  • To change the frequency, one of two methods can be used
  • The first method relies on simply using the arrow keys to take one step at a time. Arduous, but for small frequency changes, it is the least painful and if you get proficient at it, you can change the step to 1 Mhz, tune, and then change the step back
  • Holding the arrow keys down can be used to slew about faster
  • The second method involves editing the frequency on a digit by digit basis
  • The FUNC key is held while one of the arrow keys is used to select the digit to be changed
  • The arrow keys are then used individually to alter the selected digit
  • In this way, you edit the digits one by one until you have altered the current frequency to become the desired frequency
  • While playing around with the radio, I was able to do some offset tuning whereby the selected frequency was not on the usual 25 kHz boundary used in the aeronautical band.
  • Taking a frequency like 124.0250 and changing the '5' to a '0' gives 124.0200. Step up once and you're at 124.0450 and stepping down gives 123.9950
    • Memory
  • Memory consists of a single bank of 99 channels
  • The MR key is used to toggle between memory and VFO modes
  • Memory mode is designated by the appearance of the MR indicator and memory channel number at the far right hand side of the display
  • While most receivers these days have you tune the VFO to the desired frequency which is then written to memory, the 108 takes a slightly modified approach
  • A memory write is started by first going into memory mode and using the arrow keys to select the channel to be programmed
  • At this point, one of two methods are used to enter the frequency and they conform to the same methods used in VFO tuning; namely, single stepping to the desired frequency or altering individual frequency digits
  • One slight caveat is what happens when a currently empty channel is selected. When this is done, there is no frequency to tune or edit so the frequency in the VFO is used. In this way, empty channels can be easily programmed with frequencies from the VFO just like most other receivers
  • However, if you wish to alter the contents of an existing channel, you must use the tuning or digit manipulation methods
  • There is no mention of how memory channels are deleted
  • Once programmed, individual channels can be kept from being scanned by setting their Skip setting. FUNC + MW gains access to the memory set mode and then SC is pressed to access the Skip setting. Once there, its current setting can be noted and changed if desired
  • Unfortunately the skip setting is not reflected on the LCD usually and one must use the above procedure to check a channels' current Skip setting
    • Scanning
  • Since there is only one bank, your only option for selected scanning of memory channels is the use of the lockout feature
  • Luckily, there is also a temporary lockout feature
  • While scanning, should the radio stop on an undesired channel, the FUNC key is pressed and the channel is temp locked out
  • When the radio is turned off and then on, the temp locks are cleared
  • During scanning, the frequency decimal indicator blinks to indicate this mode
  • Also, the appropriate arrow keys can be used to change the scan direction
  • While scanning, I noticed that lengthy transmissions were being abandoned after about five seconds, at which point the scan was resuming
  • This feature, which they call "pause" on other models, is designed to limit the length of time one frequency will be received
  • The 108 calls this the "scan delay"
  • Since I was annoyed by the short 5 second timeout, I looked into the manual and found how it could be set between 1 and 30 seconds
  • Great, I thought and bumped up the time to 30 seconds thinking that no transmission would ever be this long and I would no longer be at the mercy of this forced scan resuming feature
  • Unfortunately, the scan delay value is the only on which this radio pays attention to resume a scan. In other words, when the current transmission ceases and the squelch closes, the radio will still refuse to resume scanning until the scan delay time has run out! Can you say barf-o-rama?!
  • So, when I had the scan delay set to 30 seconds, thinking I understood its purpose, when the usual 4-7 second transmission ended, the scan sat on this frequency for another 26-23 seconds until the scan delay had expired, then it resumed
  • For now, I have set the scan delay to 7 seconds, which gets most complete transmissions (except when there is 1 or 2 replies) while only paying a 3 second "wait" penalty for the typical 4 second transmission. Each user will have to decide on their own balance of this timing between cutting off a long transmission and waiting unnecessarily for the timer to run out on shorter transmissions
  • Luckily, the arrow keys can be used to manually force the scanner to resume if stopped on a frequency
  • My empirical measurement puts the scan speed at roughly 10 step/sec
    • Searching
  • Searching on the 108 is restricted to the full 108-137 MHz range while in VFO mode
  • The same scan delay feature is enforced here as well
  • And there is no frequency lockout capability
  • Search direction can be changed at will by using the appropriate arrow key
  • My empirical measurement puts the search speed at 25 step/sec
    • Priority
  • The 108 comes with a "dual watch" feature which is designed to mimic priority operation on other receivers
  • To use this feature, the VFO is first tuned to the priority frequency, which the manual refers to as A
  • Then FUNC + DW is pressed which activates the dual watch and displays the DW indicator
  • The arrow keys are now used to tune to another frequency, called B, to be monitored
  • Every 3 seconds, the receiver will hop over to A to see if it has an active frequency, even if B has an active transmission
  • If A is active, it will stay on A until the transmission ends
  • If the transmission on A is much shorter than the scan delay time, the receiver will wait on A until the scan delay time expires before returning to B
  • A weird setup and difficult to use considering having to tune to B using just the arrow keys (the individual digit altering method is not allowed), but I guess some functionality is better than none?
    • VHF/UHF Performance
  • Birdie testing revealed only 4 such frequencies
  • The antenna is well tuned for the aero range and picks up considerable traffic considering its diminutive size
  • A side-by-side check with Icom's IC-R2 (using the same antenna) indicated almost identical results in the air band but the 108 proved a tad more sensitive on the 2 NOAA weather frequencies I could test
  • The notable exception that was obvious between these two radios was the R2's superior audio fidelity and power
  • A sweep of the entire receive range using the stock antenna while at home showed no signs of imaging or intermod
    • Ranking
  • Keep in mind that this is a specialized receiver and as such, will not score very well considering the basis upon which the following ranking system was designed

    • Category Score Out of
    Sensitivity 25 25
    Selectivity 5 15
    Interference rejection 20 20
    Coverage 10 90
    Channels 0 15
    Channels per bank 0 15
    Ease of use 10 20
    Scan/Search speed 0 10
    Receive modes 0 15
    Step sizes 0 25
    Conversion 0 10
    Audio 0 20
    Antenna 20 20
    Construction 10 20
    Size 15 15
    Search 0 35
    Attenuator 0 20
    Auto-store 0 20
    Search frequency lockout 0 15
    Backlight 15 30
    Alpha-tagging 0 20
    VFO 5 10
    Squelch tail 0 10
    Priority 5 20
    Delay 0 15
    Hold 0 10
    Rotary Control 0 10
    S-meter 10 10
    Power-on resume 0 10
    Computer Interface 0 20
    Tone Decode 0 15
    Battery indicator 10 10
    Channel count 0 5
    Tape record control 0 5
    Clock 0 5
    Timers 0 5
    Weather programmed 5 5
    Weather alert 0 5
    Data skip 0 5
    Bank delete 0 5
    Bank sort 0 5
    Total 165 670
    Total 25 100

    Here's the ranking criteria

    Things I Like
  • Size!
  • Sensitivity
  • Search speed
  • Battery meter
  • Backlight flexibility
  • Construction
    • Things I Would Change
  • Better manual
  • Larger LCD
  • Audio power
  • Reverse FUNC and MONITOR buttons
  • Use a "real" scan delay function
  • Flatten the LCD cover
  • Search limit would be nice
  • Scan speed
  • Add memory channel delete
    • Summary
  • The AR-108 does appear to be a good niche product with the basic features and performance most will expect, along with having to deal with some quirks
  • The small size is to its advantage as is good build quality
  • Once you get use to operating it and past the horrendous manual, it will be pretty easy to operate
  • Its biggest drawbacks will be between the LCD (due to the tiny indicators and curved LCD cover) and audio power (or lack thereof)
  • If you have a hard time reading normal LCDs or fine print, then this radio is probably not for you
  • If you use it at home, the audio power will be less of an issue. If out and about, you'll probably want to think seriously about purchasing an earphone/headphones to use with it
  • Being a pilot and aero buff, I've had a good time playing with. It's small size allows me to keep it on the night stand without taking up valuable real estate and is there should the mood strike to listen to the traffic at the international airport on my back doorstep
  • I've also enjoyed being able to use it to listen to tomorrow's weather forecast just before turning in
    • Special Note
  • The model reviewed was a US model
  • The model sold in Europe has a receive range of 108 - 180 MHz
  • It also has two 99 channel banks instead of one; 1 for the 108-137 range and one for 137-180 range
  • It is also probably safe to assume that the VHF portion operates like a real tuning VFO in place of the weather frequencies the US got
  • There may be other subtle differences which will be up to you to determine
  • We can only wonder why the US received a VHF-hi-neutered version but perhaps cellular images were considered a problem?
    • Update - June 21, 1999
  • They just couldn't wait to pounce!
  • Both Jonathan Clough from Javiation and Mike Devereux from Nevada wrote in with comments about my review
  • Both said they had given comments to Maycom of Korea about revising some of the features on the radio (like the scan delay) but Maycom was unable to get any changes in before the first production run
  • The result...expect a Mk II version sometime in the future!
  • This new version may also have 8.33 kHz stepping which will become more important as time by over in the skies of Europe!
  • Thanks for the update guys!

    • June 21, 1999
    Copyright © 2010 by Richard J. Wells Return to Home Page