February 23 2004, 02:48 PM Additions

We have acquired a new radio. The make and model of the machine is the Grundig FR-200; it is billed as an emergency radio, and it would seem to excel at that. We have not actually had any emergencies for it as yet, but it performs admirably with regular use. It is a thoughtful piece of hardware.

The thing is highly flexible when it comes to power sources; like most consumer appliances, one can plug it into the wall, using a (lamentably unsupplied, but as we go, less and less necessary) standard alternating to direct current wall wart adapter (of the particular spec, of course). But, you may say, what if a large bear has knocked down the power lines? If there is no power in the wall, then the radio can run off of three AA batteries in the battery compartment. You may counter that one may never have gone to the store to purchase the batteries, what with the bears roaming the streets, or perhaps the batteries bought some years ago in those happier, bear-free times have long since bled out their power to time and neglect? This thing has a hand crank, attached to a dynamo, which powers a separate, internal rechargeable battery. Ah, you might say, the bears are clever, and they have broken into my home and charged and drained the battery pack in the radio so many times as to render it useless. That is fine, I say; the radio can be powered directly off the crank. The crank makes a racket, to be sure, but the radio may be turned up. And thus, I may listen to the bear propaganda in relative comfort.

The radio is full of other nice touches. There is a flashlight incorporated into the case, which can be run off of any of the above power sources in addition to (or along with) the radio. Attention has been paid to to things like the battery compartment cover; it is attached to the case with a stout hinge, and I think it would take a great deal of trauma to break it away completely. The internal rechargeable battery pack is user replaceable, bless them (I have not checked, but it appears to be a reasonably common three-cell cordless phone type battery pack; if nothing else, it uses a familiar cordless phone battery connector). The flashlight assembly can be popped free with a coin or better, revealing a backup bulb. The plastic knobs are a little bit wibbly, but solid knobs on radios are difficult to come by these days, and these seem to hold up well under moderate use.

The speaker is small, but more than serviceable for voice traffic. An earphone jack is provided. There are no tone controls. There is no indicator of battery power, but with the crank that is less of an issue. The whip antenna extends to 65 cm.

The radio itself is pretty reasonable. The particular listening conditions in our home are not very suitable for DXing, so I cannot speak to that. The radio pulls in all the local FM stations admirably, and does a good job with AM as well. The shortwave reception is packed into two bands, from 3200 KHz to 7600 KHz and 9200 KHz to 22 MHz. The tuning scale is quite small, so finding stations on the shortwave bands takes a bit of a deft fingertip with the fine tuning knob, but the radio fares well even with the small whip. I can reliably get the BBC and the CBC and RNL and CRI and VOA and RHI; much else comes and goes. It does not cope as well as the grand-daddy Grundig with weak signals or crowds, but it is quite serviceable.

I am not sure I wish to ponder too long on the nature of a disaster that would require my information be gotten from another continent, but it's nice to have bases covered.

In any event, this little radio has supplanted the Baygen FreePlay (a fine thing itself, yet) as the go-to radio when our fragile local power infrastructure heaves heavy sighs and sags into despondence for whatever reason. It also makes a fine radio to roam around the house for those times away from the other Grundig. 'Tis good work.