Has anyone ever used a SAME weather radio? Are they any better than NOAA ?

Quick search, first page, Weather Radios .com

butthead

S.A.M.E. is a feature of some NOAA weather radios that allows you to specify the county(s) for which you want your NOAA weather radio to provide alerts.

The reasoning is that NOAA transmitters will cover multiple counties, and you may get alerts that don't impact your immediate area. The S.A.M.E allows the NOAA system to be more geographically specific to your area.

Now, the trick is that if you travel to a different area you'll either have to look up and enter the S.A.M.E. codes for your current location, OR simply turn off the S.A.M.E. feature so you get all of the alerts for the NOAA transmitter you're listening to. Otherwise you'll get no alerts.

Personally, I like the S.A.M.E feature and use it, but I know how to turn it off when traveling.

quote butthead: "Quick search, first page, Weather Radios .com


butthead"

The MN link above doesn't seem to work for whatever reason.

Here is another link for MN . Also notice some of even the same counties (usually large) have different SAME codes -- for example ST Louis CTY in MN around ELY it's 327137-- and for Duluth it's either 727137 or 927137. This is done for obvious reasons in larger counties as these larger counties are bigger then several normal counties combined. No need being on the Eastern Side of Rainy Lake and having your radio go off for something in Duluth..... ST Louis in MN I believe is the only CTY in MN that has different SAME codes throughout the CTY.

Jeff,
the link is for WeatherRadios.com with a discription of S.A.M.E.
"Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME) allows a user to program a weather radio to only play alerts for a specific county. This allows users to only hear warnings for their area. To utilize SAME technology, a weather radio must have the "alert" feature. Radios with this capability are often call SAME weather radios or weather alert radios. All desktop radios that we sell have SAME capability, but many portable radios and most older desktop radios do not.

Without SAME programming, a weather radio will activate and play any weather alert within the broadcast area of the NWR transmitter (radio station) to which the radio is tuned, and users will hear warnings that do not apply to them (counties other than their own). To find the six digit SAME code for the county in which you live (or are currently located), simply select your state from the table below. In Canada, SAME codes are referred to as Canadian Location Codes (CLC's)."

butthead

Thanks everyone for the help!!