Confederate Sharpshooter

Every home should have a few good radios, and unless you are blessed to live in an area that never experiences floods, storms, hurricanes, power outages, or other emergencies, you really should have a few radios specifically for emergencies. You certainly don’t need as many as I seem to have collected over the years, from a vintage monster desktop bought at a thrift store for $15 and brought back to life by Freeholder’s dad, to the latest and greatest wonder from import land. But you should have a couple of radios that will keep you informed on what is going on when the power goes out and weather or other circumstances keep you housebound.

First of all, what not to buy: cheap is good when you are buying beans or gas, but not when you need a quality bit of kit to keep you safe. That said, you don’t have to break the bank and get the most expensive either, especially where radios are concerned. Since TV is the ‘big dog’ in the entertainment world today, radio has to compete by offering a lot for the money, and that gives you some real bargains. Yet a lot of people still think a radio is just a radio, and the $10 special at Big Lots is good enough. It might be, but I’d rather spend a bit more and know I can depend on my radio to get the job done when I need it. One example, the lovely CT Girl received her choice of gifts recently at her place of employment during an appreciation day. She opted for a portable size ‘emergency radio’ that included AM/FM and NOAA weather radio, built in flashlight and even an emergency button that flashed the LED light and made siren sounds thru the radio. Power was supplied by AA batteries or a hand crank generator. Sounds great, doesn’t it? It would have been, if all those features worked as advertised. In reality, the first thing she tried to do was crank the generator handle to charge the batteries. The crank handle broke off in her hand. Not a good start. It got worse: radio reception on AM, while decent, was very noisy- so noisy that except for strong local stations it was unlistenable. FM had a lot of drift, and the NOAA required much effort to tune in the local station- the tower of which is visible from our front yard. Rather than toss the radio, I spent an hour and some epoxy repairing the crank, which works well now. It sits in the corner, a reminder that all those features don’t mean squat if they don’t work.

What is a good radio, then? Not a subject to be covered in a short blog post, for certain. Entire books are written on the subject, and thousands of web pages. But I would like to introduce you to a couple of my favorites, and tell you why I think they are worth having around.

First of all, the venerable and popular GE Super Radio, pictured above.

Sadly, the liberal dolt that has been running General Electric into the ground has been forced into selling off a lot of things to keep from bankrupting the company, and the Super Radio has been one of the casualties. Search for a super radio on Amazon, and you’ll find it now labeled as the RCA Super Radio. Fear not, however- there are millions of the GE versions still out there, and who knows, RCA might even improve upon the design and make it better. Time will tell.
Why a Super Radio? Well, a radio is a personal choice, and it may or may not fit what you like in a radio, but for millions of us country folks who don’t live in a city full of radio stations, it is the best bang for the buck. Prices vary from $79 retail, down to $39 on sale for a new radio, or if you feel lucky even less for used models. For that little coin you get excellent reception on both AM and FM bands, as well as good, clear sound quality on both voice frequencies and music. But the best feature of the radio is one you seldom see mentioned: battery life. In a world of gadgets powered by boatloads of AA or AAA batteries that last a few days, the Super Radio uses 6- count ‘em, SIX- big, heavy “D” size batteries. My former employer, owner of the AM Station I worked at in the 80’s, would use nothing but the Super Radio for remotes and DX listening, and often remarked to me that the “D” batteries gave much more battery life per dollar spent than the smaller and less powerful cells. (Battery engineering has greatly improved AA batteries since that time, but still, bigger is better.) The Super Radio is also equipped with a heavy power cord- no wall warts here, just a standard size power cord self contained in the case- but the batteries last so long, it is tempting to just use the batteries and replace them when they grow weak. That can take a seriously long time, too: I have personally used mine at my work place daily on battery only for over six months, and replaced the batteries when the volume grew a bit weak.

Probably the best feature of the Super Radio is the simplicity- only basic controls, big “on/off” button, manual tuning via a large knob on the side, volume, bass, treble and a couple of switches for AM/FM and the like. The manual is well written and easy to read. If you really need to pick up extremely weak stations, screw terminals on the back allow you to connect both an FM antenna and even an AM antenna- very unusual these days. The reception is good enough that boosting the AM is rarely needed, but if you need to, something like the C. Crane Twin Coil Ferrite AM Antenna http://www.ccrane.com/antennas/am-antennas/twin-coil-ferrite-am-antenna.aspx is highly recommended.

Of course, nothing is perfect. Drawbacks on the Super Radio include size- it’s huge, and heavy- weighing over 6 lbs before you install the batteries. It does not have a built in weather radio, nor does it pick up short wave. But for a simple, reliable, long lasting radio with good reception and sound quality, you’d be hard pressed to find a better value for the money spent. And when the power goes out, you’ll be very happy you didn’t get the cheapest one in the box store.

Tomorrow: The Kaito 1121