Grundig G6 Aviator AM/FM, aircraft band and Shortwave Radio, Black

by Grundig

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 1.1 x 4.9 x 3 inches ; 7.4 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0014T5UM4
• Item model number: G6
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #55,400 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: January 1, 2007

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

From the Manufacturer With the Grundig G6 Aviator at your side, you’ll always have great listening options. Tune in to AM, FM, aircraft band or shortwave frequencies easily with direct keypad entry. Use the multiple tuning features to quickly scan or browse stations. This portable radio only weighs about 7 ounces, so you can always have your favorite stations at hand. The international clock and wake-up alarms keep you on schedule, wherever your travels take you.

The large keypad and display make tuning quick and easy View Larger

Long-Range, Portable Flexibility.
The Grundig G6 Aviator brings you coverage of all medium-wave and shortwave frequencies, as well as FM bands. Specifically, it covers three frequency ranges. The 520kHz to 30MHz frequency range grants access to the entire AM band and shortwave broadcasts with single-sideband tuning. This far-reaching frequency range puts you in touch with news and entertainment from across the world, and also allows reception of ham radio operators, maritime and shortwave aeronautical stations.

The 88MHz to 108MHz band covers traditional FM radio, and the G6 Aviator passes its stereo signal through to the convenient headphone jack. Additionally, this radio also receives the 117MHz to 137MHz National Civilian Aeronautical Band, letting you monitor multiple aircraft communication frequencies.

Handy Features For Easy Use.
The Grundig G6 Aviator tames its powerful tuning flexibility with a robust on-board memory system. It can store up to 700 stations with 4-character station naming. The Auto Tuning feature takes the hassle out of tuning in to multiple frequencies by automatically scanning and storing stations for FM, AM and shortwave signals. Multiple scan tuning types make it easy to listen to new signals. The STOP tuning system stops on the next available frequency, while the D5 tuning system gives you a 5-second taste of each station before moving to the next. The G6 Aviator's front panel is also equipped for manual and direct tuning, allowing you to punch in the exact frequency you want. The digital signal meter dynamically shows signal strength, and is a valuable companion when adjusting an optional external antenna or manually tuning to distant stations.

Weighing in at only 7 ounces, the Grundig G6 Aviator is light enough to take anywhere. An included AC adapter provides power when at home or the office, and 2 AA batteries let you take this radio with you wherever you go. The key lock feature keeps you tuned in by preventing accidental button presses. Additionally, the easy-to-read backlit LCD screen also displays an international clock with three programmable alarms, keeping you on schedule no matter where your travels take you.

What's in the Box?
The Grundig G6 Aviator comes with an AC adaptor, earbuds for private listening and a protective carrying pouch.

Product Description

With the Aviator at your side, you'll always have great listening options. Tune in to AM, FM, aircraft band or Shortwave frequencies easily with direct keypad entry. Or, use the STOP tuning feature to browse stations and stop on the next available frequency. You can also use D5 tuning to get a taste of what's playing stop on the next available frequency for five seconds at a time. Use the international clock and wake-up alarms to keep you on schedule, wherever your travels take you.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very high quality Grundig LW/AM/FM/SW/Air-band super-portable radio, May 10, 2008

By 

Ann E. Revelle (Los Alamos, New Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Grundig G6 Aviator AM/FM, aircraft band and Shortwave Radio, Black (Electronics)

This is indeed an excellent new product. It seems very well made and should last a long time if treated with care. The radio is both extremely small (almost the same size as the Kaito KA11!) and readily transportable yet the reception is still excellent on all available bands. It is certainly not a Kaito KA1103 by any means, but for its size and weight it is quite exceptional, plus it has the aircraft band frequencies (see below for further details).

I like being able to change the news/music switch in order to slightly improve AM and SW signal audio fidelity (on my unit it is certainly NOT a deep bass boost switch however with little tonal changes being evident as the switch changes its position). Unfortunately this is also NOT a narrow/wide bandwidth filter switch which is not available on this radio at all. Using the SSB (single sideband) BFO (beat frequency oscillator) tuner is also very easy and straight forward with a key press on the front of the radio and in fine increments using the tuning dial as well. Unlike some other radios, SSB tuning is also available on the G6 on the AM band as well as on SW which is a very useful feature. The separate ability to step tune in very small increments with the jog dial setting is also excellent in my opinion once a signal of interest has been located. The unit also has an attached 20 inch telescopic antenna as well as an external antenna jack which is especially nice for receiving the weaker FM/SW/Aircraft band stations as well as an earphone jack for private listening (including FM stereo). LW and MW (AM) stations are tuned using the internal and excellent ferrite antenna coil.

I rather like the digital volume controls as well. The steps between each setting are sufficiently small that quite precise control of the volume levels can be attained, especially when using earphones which is my most common mode of operating this radio given the smallness of its speaker (but still adequate).

In addition, the Grundig manual for the G6 although too brief and lacking in some important technical details is just fine to read with no English translation problems as with the Degen (Kaito) radio manuals for the KA1102/KA1103. Degen now makes the G4, G5 and G6 for Grundig (whose designs originated from the Degen engineering brainpower from some 6 years ago now). These radios are now advertised as designed in California (by the Eton Corporation) and made in China, but to be fair Grundig has capitalized on a proven Degen/Kaito design and greatly improved on the ergonomics for using these fine radios.

The availability of the complete LW spectrum (formally from 153-279 KHz), but continuous on this radio from 150 KHz all the way to the start of the AM (MW) band at 520 KHz and of the Aircraft bands (117-137 MHz) and of the complete SW spectrum (1.711 to 29.999 MHz) on this unit is also true of the G5 as well (with the exception of the aircraft band). The Eton Corporation will soon start to advertise the availability of the complete LW band features on these new Grundig branded radios since it was originally and inadvertently overlooked by the marketers. (If you still have any doubts read the back of the radio in zoom mode on this website). The Sony ICF-SW7600GR also has the full spectrum of LW/AM(MW) and SW bands too and has advertised it all along, but that radio also lacks the aircraft band that is available on the new G6 Aviator radio. Especially for international travelers, the 10 KHz AM tuning step for N. America can also be changed to the 9 KHz step that is standard in Europe and Asia too.

One negative item is that the airband can not be automatically scanned like all of the other available bands on this radio. Another very negative item (see also below for those of you who live in heavily urban areas with lots of simultaneous interfering signals possible), is that there is no RF gain switch (DX/normal/local, etc.) on this radio at all either. Considering just how sensitive the front end of this radio is to weak signals, this is a very surprising error of omission in my humble opinion and one that should be rectified by Grundig (PUN intended!).

The G6 even has alarms and time zone capabilities and 700 memories that can be labeled along with with multiple and very useful ways I might add to tune and store information in this very versatile, dual conversion PLL (phase locked loop) synthesized, diminutive "micro-receiver style" radio. These memories are arranged for all of the 100 pages with 7 memories to a page. Each of these 100 pages can be labeled alphanumerically in groupings to boot. The presets can also be chosen on each page randomly regardless of the band. On another website there is a discussion of some occasional small microprocessor problems when loading two adjacent presets on a single page. The radio apparently can lock up, but it is easy to unlock and simply reload the page once again with no further preset storage problems.

There is even an on-screen clock as well as the day of the week and a battery level indicator, a hold switch for locking all of the buttons as well as a separate lock switch chosen through the jog dial for the tuned frequency. There is also a very nice on screen and very detailed signal strength meter and a nice orange back-light system. The radio can also charge batteries inside the radio (sounds like the KA1102/KA1103 proven technology once again- eh?) and it even comes with a one year warranty, a slip case as well as a AC/DC adapter charger. It runs on 2 AA batteries normally while in its portable state. It even has a nice carrying strap permanently attached to the radio as well which is a nice touch given its very small size. For you collectors, there is even a Buzz Aldrin special edition version of this radio advertised on Amazon, but apparently it is not yet available (as on early May 2008).

UPDATE: May 27, 2008:

I am in Alabama on travel and I too have now experienced very significant bleeding of apparently high power am stations directly on to the aircraft band at several frequencies. As a heads up, this just goes to show that to adequately test any radio it should be done at several locations. However, I have experienced none of this am frequency bleeding at my home location in the high mountains of New Mexico for example. This suggests that the dual conversion available at two IF (intermerdiate frequencies) in this radio are not adequate in some locations to adequately block unwanted noise from the aircraft bands.

June 18, 2008 UPDATE:

Yes, as I had previously indicated above, the G6 Aviator is a PLL (Phase locked loop) dual conversion receiver with a digital display and 700 presetable memories (Information recently confirmed by Walter Hess, Technical Support Manager, Etón Corporation, 1015 Corporation Way. Palo Alto, CA 94303 USA)

Finally, I look forward very much to having the fun of using this radio for the high quality sounds of music, news and just general LW/AM(MW) broadcast band, shortwave and aircraft band listening from all over the globe for a very long time.

September 8, 2008: UPDATE

For those of you who really really like this radio (and there is a lot to like), in order to compensate for its extremely good sensitivity (except perhaps in the am band), a trick that I learned about by reading other web reviews is to actually shorten the whip antenna length significantly when bleeding and other interference occurs. This allows the arriving radio signals to not overload the system and be received with very significant improvement. Ironically, usually we are always interested in lengthening the radio antenna (especially outdoors if it is not too noisy at the radio frequencies of interest). I hope that this may help you to continue to enjoy your new Grundig radio! Out in the open countryside this bleeding is NOT a problem at all, so only the big city radio listeners (or travelers to big cities) need to be beware of this potential problem for the G6.

April 11, 2009: UPDATE

One very nice feature of the 24 hour clock system is that it is fully adjustable for traveling including a GMT (Zulu or UTC) setting. With the radio off you simply press and hold the #8 key until a long list of coded city names appears. Next, you simply choose the time zone code closest to the one that you are currently within using the tuning knob and wait 8 seconds and you are all set (it is then automatically stored until you change it again). If you desire to know the Universal (UTC) time separately, you simply choose the "GMT" choice briefly to find the time in Greenwich, England and then repeat the above procedure and go right back to your current timezone location. (Unfortunately there is no provision in the G6 for entering the date or activating daylight savings time so at certain times of the year your indicated GMT time could be up to 1 hour off unless you live in Arizona, etc.) As you continue to travel this process is easily repeated as often as may be needed.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An unbeatable value, October 6, 2008

By 

Larry D. Wolken "Dr. Electrode" (Central Pennsylvania USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Grundig G6 Aviator AM/FM, aircraft band and Shortwave Radio, Black (Electronics)

I've owned this radio since it was first introduced and I've owned maybe 30 or 40 portable shortwave radios over the past couple of decades. I find this little unit to be a great value BUT only if you're looking for the feature set offered. Obviously if you don't care about aviation traffic or SSB, you could do a lot better for the money. BUT in my experience there aren't any better value radios out there at this price point that do it all better.

The aviation band is just so-so in terms of sensitivity and overload protection from broadcast AM but I find the SSB remarkable. SSB signals are easily found with the fast dial speed and easily tuned in to "listenable" frequencies with the slow speed setting.

The shortwave broadcast band is very sensitive and fidelity with good headphones is quite good and the FM stereo audio is excellent again through earphones. The channel separation or selectivity could be better on the shortwave bands but it's not bad unless you have two very big guns right next to each other.

All in all if you're looking for nice small portable shortwave radio that can handily receive broadcast AM shortwave, SSB, AM/FM commercial broadcasts, the G6 can be a lot of fun at a very good price point

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Poor instructions but great sound, August 1, 2008

By 

C. Keeney (Magnet, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Grundig G6 Aviator AM/FM, aircraft band and Shortwave Radio, Black (Electronics)

(What's this?)

Setting up the radio is a bit frustrating. There are quite a few symbols and numbers on the screen but no where in the book does it tell you what these mean. Normally most instruction manuals show what these are at the beginning of the manual but not this one. I also have read thru the manual and still have not figured them out.
The manual says that the radio can be powered by either 2 AA batteries or rechargable ones and neither were included. But 2 AAA batteries were included. It also says earphones are not included but it comes with earbuds.
This might be a great radio if the instructions were any good. Even auto searching for radio stations is a bit confusing to me. It says there are 3 different search functions. One is stop, where it stops at each station it finds, the second one is D-5, where it stops only for 5 seconds and continues on, and the thirdly, auto tuning storage. I tried it all 3 ways and it never worked. I spent 15 mins trying to figure this out. And even though I was following the instructions, sometimes the button to select these functions worked and sometimes it didn't. Currently to find a station, I have to manually find it instead of hitting the autosearch arrow key and that's really frustrating.

I loved the feel of this radio as it feels like a fine suede. The sound is awesome, however, I had to stand in the middle of my kitchen and hold the radio. If I attempted to lay it down, the music changed to static.

I will update this review if I succeed in figuring out how to work the radio. I am really excited to try the shortwave, but as another reviewer said, the radio needs a special long wire antenna or 50 to 75-Ohm coaxial cable feed line.