Back in the 1970s I remember a school friend boasting how his father had the best radio ever. The family had been living in the US and brought the radio with them on return to the UK. At the time I had several walkie-talkies that operated on the 28MHz amateur wave band and I was invited round to see if their radio could pick up their signals.

I was greeted with a huge Zenith Trans-Oceanic radio.  It could receive the majority of the short wave bands and had no difficulty tuning into the walkie-talkies. I’d never seen such an elaborate radio with its World map showing the time zones,  chrome trim and monster telescopic aerials. This was indeed an amazing radio and amazingly heavy.

Of course the Japanese wanted to copy the best designs and Sony’s tribute act was the Earth-Orbiter CRF-5090 produced around the mid seventies, just like Zenith’s Trans-Oceanic Royal 7000 series. I found my Earth-Orbiter online, listed as faulty and thought it worth the £65 asking price.

Sony produced a slightly more compact copy of the Zenith – a bit like a Honda Civic compared to a Lincoln Town car maybe. Sony’s effort is also a heavy radio, very solidly built. The front panel has a cover to protect the tuning dial and controls that are revealed when the cover is unclipped. It slides into place beneath to leave a world map with time zones indicating the main feature of this radio. Like several other Earth Orbiter’s I’ve seen, the front panel has sustained some surface scratches but it’s saved the internal dial as you can see.

The CRF-5090 has 9 wave bands in total Air, FM, MW, LW and five shortwave bands covering 1MHz to 26MHz. With an external aerial – via screw connections on the rear – this set can pull in transmissions from around the world giving its name Earth Orbiter. It has an additional beat frequency oscillator that enables you to hear coded transmissions from pure carrier waves or single side band modulation used by amateur radio enthusiasts.

While the Sony is not as sensitive or robust as a communications receiver favoured by true amateurs it does provide more interest than Grundig or Roberts radios can on shortwave. The Sony’s FM band also allows you to tune into your favourite local programmes or catch up on world news so has all bases covered.

One of the Earth-Orbiter’s coolest features at the time was the ‘magic’ red led in the tuning dial. The intensity increases then decreases as you tune through a station making it easy to locate the exact frequency. There’s also a tuning meter that achieves much the same function but the additional led light put it in a different class. Led lighting is now low cost and ubiquitous but when this Sony was first manufactured they were novel and expensive semiconductors – and only available in red.

There’s also a standard incandescent dial light, at the push of a button, to aid tuning in low light. As the front panel shows, of course, the main feature of this radio is tuning – the largest control on the set. There are in fact two tuning controls, the outer knob provides fast movement through the band’s frequency range while the smaller inner knob allows fine tuning.

Overall there’s not much to dislike with the Earth-Orbiter. Internally the set has all discrete components so it’s relatively easy to service and repair should you find a problem. My example does everything I expect and more from a 50 year old transistor radio. The only niggle I can find is the non-standard 3 pin power socket on the rear – I’ve not been able to find a matching plug so can only operate it on batteries – it uses 8 x 1.5v D Cells (U2 or HP2 in old money).

So if you’d like to listen to world of shortwaves and have a solid table or shelf keep a look out for the Sony Earth-Orbiter.

Front of Sony Earth Orbiter showing the tining dial set to air band with the large tining dial lower left. Power, squeltch, BFO, RF gain, Tone Volume and AFC controls run along beneath the dial. A world map is printed on the slide out front cover.

Sony Earth Orbiter CRF-5090

Shows the Sony CRF-5090 model details with the 9 band's frequency range anlong with transistor count for radio (13)and aux (7). The unusual 3 pin mains socket along with tape output jack are on the right side.

Sony CRF-5090 Rear connections and details.

PS

Sony produced several variants of the Earth-Orbiter. The model featured here is the CRF-5090 with an FM AIR band 108-136MHz. Other models, dependent on country, had an additional public service FM band or only the commercial FM band.