Bill wrote:
Agreed. Locally here they have been advertising EAS type consumer
radios. From what I gather from the blurb they seem like the real thing
with programmable municipality codes, programmable to your choice of
alert tones, etc. I don't know what a S.A.M.E. is , maybe the same
thing ? (Oops, sri for the pun)

ouch!

S.A.M.E. = Specific Area Message Encoding. It decodes the EAS bursts so
you can program it to only respond to alerts for your area, as opposed
to the older radios that keyed on the alert tone & would go off for
everything.

I haven't bothered to hear a brand name or price but I suspect its cheap
enough to negate building your own from scratch.

Radio Shack sells them, for well under $100. However, the model I had
can only be programmed for location, not for alert type. (i.e. you can
program which counties it'll go off for, but it'll go off for all types
of alert for those counties. If they issue another Amber Alert at 3am
I'm going to turn the d*mned thing off...)
--
Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View (Nashville), TN EM66
http://www.w9wi.com