A.C. Air show is scheduled for tomorrow (& rain in the forecast, too). On their website they have Here are some helpful tips to optimize your Airshow experience:
AM radios can be used to tune into the show’s live broadcast.
My plug-in clock radio has AM & my car does too, but I’m not exactly going to carry one of them around with me. Can you even buy small (transistor-style) AM radios in a store anymore? Where? (I’m not going, but if I were ebay/Amazon couldn’t deliver fast enough.)
Sure, any major walmart type store will have them. Just that nobody cares about AM radio, so they are sold as “weather radios” or similar. Edit to add, or at least in areas where tornados are an issue they aren’t hard to find.
My mp3 player has AM/FM. I’ve never used it but the feature is in my setup menus.
you can still buy a AM/FM pocket radio at radio shack. $14 Walmart might have one a couple bucks cheaper.
Where I got it and why I had it have been sloughed off by memory cell replacement, but in 1967, I had a table model plug in radio that was FM only, and I could only get one station. The kind with tubes, that took a half a minute to warm up when you turned it on. I could also listen to Channel 6 TV audio down at the end of the dial.
Many of what are billed as “emergency radios” tune AM/FM as well as shortwave. Always handy to have around.
Grundig YB400 with spare batteries. It used to live in my office, now it lives in our emergency crate, which gets hauled out to cope with power outages 2-3 times a year.
It’s useful primarily when the outage is so prolonged that cell data service is marginal or interrupted.
I have a few portable ones. A few Walkman types, but headphone only, no speaker. A couple of boomboxes with AM/FM. One set of headphones with a built-in AM/FM radio. A portable CD player with AM/FM.
I have Grundig FR200 that is my emergency radio. It’s also an FM and a shortwave receiver and it can be charged by cranking.
It’s no longer sold by the company; but I bought one for all my family members when it was. It’s sturdy and it sounds great
I don’t own one, but I think I could get most AM stations through my iPhone.
I have one of those emergency radios. It gets AM and weather band (whatever that is). It has a solar panel and a hand crank, so I don’t need to recharge batteries or plug it it.
It’s in a box with a bunch of other “emergency” stuff, like flashlights and a first-aid kit and batteries and water and I can’t even remember what else. I should probably have a look one of these days.
I still have a standard-issue AM/FM transistor radio. Until recently, I used the AM side to tune in the radio broadcasts of Cleveland Indians games, even when I was watching them on TV. (Tom Hamilton, the Indians play-by-play man, is the absolute best in the business, and I’ll fight anyone who tries to say otherwise!)
I now have MLB’s At Bat app on my iPhone, and I tune in the games through that instead, even though the commentary is delayed by a minute or so and I have to sync up the telecast with it by pausing my DVR.
The advantage to this system is that that audio stream has only the network commercials, so there is silence at the end of every full inning for local affiliates to run their commercials. And since I have the iPhone tied into a Bluetooth sound bar, I can mute the audio with the remote when the network commercials are playing, and thus take in the games commercial-free.
But back to the original question, this is the only purpose the AM side of that transistor radio is/was used for. I do use the FM side in the morning to listen to NPR when I’m getting ready for work. I have a shower radio, a radio in the kitchen and the transistor for the bedroom when I’m getting dressed. So all bases are covered.
This statement has to be evaluated in light of the continued popularity of talk radio. Not that I’m happy about it, but it is a reality.
In fact, my prediction is that with all the different music delivery systems now available, it’s FM radio that will die out before long. Who on earth beyond complete technophobes will still want to listen through seven-minute blocks of commercials before getting to music of someone else’s choosing, when they can choose their own music on demand in any number of ways…or at least listen commercial-free on satellite, smart phone or computer?
I’m betting that in 10 years or so, only AM will be left standing, for talk and sports.
I have a portable AM/FM radio that uses batteries and can be plugged in. No crank and no light, but it does have a weather button on the top.
I’ve also got a nice pocket Walkman, and an AM/FM shower radio that could very easily accompany me to an airshow.
I use them chiefly to listen to the aforementioned Tom Hamilton 
In fact all of the presets are 1100 AM and 100.7 FM (both carry Indians games)
I used the transistor to listen to an actual music station for a while, when not listening to baseball, but since this is Cleveland and we can’t have nice things (aside from Tom Hamilton) the station was canned and now I’m back to silence.
We have several, mostly as emergency backup equipment, so they get an array of radio bands. Not exactly “put in your shirt pocket” though.
I’ve got my Grundig YB400, a GE SuperRadio and several no-name pocket am radios.
I’m pretty sure that all current generation iPods have an AM receiver built into them.
I know we have a couple somewhere around the house. Whether we have any 9 volt batteries to go in them, I’m not sure.
I just checked the specs on Apple’s web site, and none of the iPods lists an AM radio capability. The iPod Nano has an FM radio, but other iPods (shuffle, touch and classic) do not.
There is probably some market for a handful of FM stations for in car and at work unless wireless carriers really up their data plans (which right now, aren’t really enough to stream all month long in the car and at work).
I’m not disagreeing that the market for talk radio is more stable, but what I really meant to say was that AM radio isn’t really a feature that sells very many new portable handheld radios.
a couple of them.