3D-printed ATS Mini stand
3D-printed desktop stand that props the ATS Mini at a comfortable viewing angle. Check it is cut for your case revision (V3 and V4 differ slightly).
$5.00$10.01
View on AliExpressAccessories & tools
The extras that make the ATS Mini nicer to live with — a stand, an antenna mount, the right cable, good earphones, and an antenna-tuning tool.
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Out of the box the ATS Mini is good. A handful of cheap additions make it genuinely nicer to carry and listen with, and one of the most useful is not a gadget at all. It is the right cable.
A stand and a mount
A 3D-printed stand props the radio at a readable angle on a desk. Printed parts vary between sellers, and the V3 and V4 cases differ slightly in size, so check the listing is cut for your revision. A small magnetic base lets you stick a whip to a steel rail, a radiator or a car roof and aim it. It is a mechanical mount, though. On shortwave the whip is a capacitive probe, not a tuned monopole, so do not expect the metal to act as a proper ground plane.
Small magnetic antenna base
Compact magnetic base for sticking a whip to any steel surface — a balcony rail, a car roof, a radiator. A mechanical mount to aim a whip, not an RF ground plane.
$3.50$3.61
View on AliExpressThe cable that is not a gadget
The ATS Mini charges and flashes firmware over the same USB-C port, and plenty of cheap cables only carry power. If a firmware update or this site’s USB remote will not connect, a charge-only cable is the usual culprit before the radio is. A known-good short data cable takes the guesswork out of it. See connecting over USB or Bluetooth.
Short USB-C data cable
A short, data-capable USB-C cable — the unglamorous fix for the most common ATS Mini snag. The radio flashes firmware and runs the USB remote over this port, and many cheap cables only carry power. Keep a known-good data one in the bag.
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View on AliExpressEarphones and the headphone amp
The ATS Mini has a 3.5 mm jack driven by a built-in headphone amplifier, so decent earphones earn their keep. Shortwave and SSB live down in the noise, and a half-decent set lets you hear into it instead of past it. The KZ Castor is a cheap tunable dual-driver set, around sixteen dollars, with little switches that let you tame hissy shortwave; there is a pricier Pro version if you want it. If your phone has dropped its headphone jack, a small USB-C DAC dongle lets the same earphones plug into it — that one is for the phone, not the radio, which has its own 3.5 mm out.
KZ Castor in-ear earphones
KZ Castor IEMs — a cheap tunable dual-driver set that sounds well above its price on the radio, and doubles as wired earphones for a phone.
$13.65$13.87
View on AliExpressUSB-C to 3.5 mm DAC adapter
A USB-C to 3.5 mm DAC dongle. Strictly optional, and for your phone rather than the radio (the ATS Mini has its own 3.5 mm out) — it lets the same earphones plug into a phone that dropped the headphone jack. A real DAC, not a passive splitter.
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View on AliExpressThe NanoVNA, and what it is really for
Here is the part most blog posts get wrong. The ATS Mini’s antenna input is high-impedance by design, not 50 ohms, so a NanoVNA, which is a 50-ohm instrument, cannot meaningfully measure the radio itself or a short whip. What it is good for is the antennas you build: tuning a loop or a dipole to resonance, and checking whether a mystery adapter or a length of coax is lossy. If you like making antennas it is a great tool. If you just want to listen, it is happily skippable.
NanoVNA
NanoVNA vector network analyzer — for building and tuning resonant antennas (a loop, a dipole) and checking coax and adapters. A 50-ohm tool, so it cannot measure the radio’s own high-impedance input. An enthusiast tool, not a must-have.
$44.50$47.34
View on AliExpressA few more things worth a few dollars: a pouch or a small hard case, a screen protector trimmed to the 1.9-inch display, clip-on ferrite chokes to quiet a noisy charger, and, if you run one of the active antennas, a bias-tee to actually power it.