{"id":2161,"date":"2018-01-14T16:23:10","date_gmt":"2018-01-14T22:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/minorcoursecorrection.com\/?p=2161"},"modified":"2026-05-20T14:15:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T14:15:19","slug":"how-to-turn-your-android-phone-into-a-weather-radio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jphikes.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/14\/how-to-turn-your-android-phone-into-a-weather-radio\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Turn Your Android Phone into a Weather Radio"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many years ago, before I took up long distance hiking, I used to canoe and camp.\u00a0 My girlfriend at the time and I had a special island in the Boundary Waters that we liked to call our own.\u00a0 It was secluded and the northern part of island was a small cliff where we liked to set up a hammock and watch the wildlife.\u00a0 It would take about two days to get there from where we parked the truck. The seven day forecast called for a slight chance of rain later in the week.\u00a0 As this was prior to smartphones and my ultra-light ways, one critical piece of equipment I took was a weather radio.<\/p>\n

We were packing up on day five and were planning on paddling back early the next morning. That slight chance of rain carried on for the week.\u00a0 As the day wore on we could see from our perch that a pretty big storm was coming.\u00a0 We talked about maybe leaving early and finding a campsite on shore.\u00a0 We turned on the weather radio.\u00a0 It told us that the slight chance of rain turned into a storm, and it was going to be massive and it was approaching fast.\u00a0 We decided to dig in and packed up everything we didn’t want to get wet.\u00a0 We pulled out and tied down our canoe and huddled in our tent.<\/p>\n

The storm was the very worst I’ve ever been in.\u00a0 The waters were white.\u00a0 The wind blew down our tent.\u00a0 The trees bent.\u00a0 Two large limbs fell in our camp.\u00a0 We huddled in the lowest part of the island that wasn’t getting washed over from the waves in our outer shells.\u00a0 The kicker was that lightning struck a tree no more than 100 feet from us.\u00a0 My ears rung.<\/p>\n

This went on for hours.\u00a0 The lightning was so constant that it was like twilight, even though it was the dead of the night.\u00a0 It was terrible, but it would have been much worse if we would have tried to make it to shore.\u00a0 We would have been caught up in the storm and surely we would have capsized before we made it.\u00a0 We survived, in part due to that little weather radio.<\/p>\n

So, it is 2018 and I am an ultra-light backpacker.\u00a0 I carry all of the world’s knowledge in my pocket.\u00a0 I still want that weather radio.\u00a0 I know that it is still important.\u00a0 So, how do you turn your Android Phone into a weather radio that doesn’t need the Internet?\u00a0 Turns out that it is cheaper than you think and doesn’t require you to take anything you will not already be taking.\u00a0 It also meets the backpacker’s budget.\u00a0 If you have the phone, the conversion is free!<\/p>\n

To make a weather radio, we need just three things:<\/p>\n