Midland Alan 9001 CB Radio Review

Paul Tex tries out the Emperor Shogun lookalike SSB radio and gives us his opinions!

After opening the rather hefty box and packaging, I was quite surprised to see what looked just like an Emperor Shogun. Well, that’s what it basically is, “An Emperor Shogun!” It is a very nice looking radio with plenty of controls to play about with but these are mostly nothing new, however the memory buttons are quite useful.

On testing with a power meter, I found that the radio was doing around 15 Watts on FM/AM and around 25 Watts on SSB. These values are usually pretty standard, so no surprises here either! The receive quality, in my opinion is where in the radio excels, the sound quality is pretty similar to the President Lincoln, but sounds just that little bit sharper making it easier to pick out voices in awkward conditions, and by all accounts according to others, it sounds very nice just with the standard microphone. So far so good.

Here comes a big disappointment. On my particular model, I soon learned that I could go no lower than 26.500 MHz. As most of my work is done below this frequency, this came as a huge blow for me. Whether it is just my model or this is standard for the range I don’t know. Hmmm, Not good.

The microphone is pretty tacky too but seems to sound okay and has quite a punchy modulation, but I’ll stick to my MAAS desk mike for now. Maybe Alan could have spent a little bit more time on the design of the microphone, but it seems that most companies spend more time on the transceiver cosmetics, rather than the humble blower!

On the back there is a large heat sink, along with your usual PA and CW sockets etc.

Apart from the annoyance of the short coverage, the Alan 9001 is a very nice radio and should provide adequate functions for the Novice Dx’er but if you are looking for something a little different then look elsewhere. This radio has nothing more to offer than most standard SSB CB sets.

The radio costs between £200 and £225 pounds sterling and is available from many outlets. Conclusion: A good radio let down by lack of coverage.

Radio reviewed by Paul.