Herculodge Radio Tour: The Day in the Life of a Radio Lover
The strengths and weaknesses of my radios should give you an idea of what to look for as you search for your own radio needs. Here's a brief tour of some, surely not all, of my radios:
The strengths and weaknesses of my radios should give you an idea of what to look for as you search for your own radio needs. Here's a brief tour of some, surely not all, of my radios:

He does a good job of showing how television gives us a God's-eye view of everything so that we have a delusion of omniscience and this false power fuels our delusions of grandeur. Additionally, this God's-eye view spoils us so that we can't live in stillness and see life in the here and now but only media's cheap, hyped representations of life.
This unhealthy quest for god-hood, he shows, has taken shape in the popularity of Reality TV shows, which feed our sense of entitlement, self-pity, and our narcissistic wish to be recognized over others.
By showing how our inability to embrace true heroes connects to our obsession with making ourselves into pseudo heroes, Zengotita has found an original, sometimes funny, and always profound way to make us look at the way the media is shaping our psyches and our souls.

Responding to my hyper-masculine, rhapsodic praise of the Nautica Ocean 50 Chronograph, Ed Strnad writes:


You can spend $5,000-10,000 or more on status watches or you can spend under $300 on the Nautica Ocean 50 Chronograph, a big brawny watch featuring a bezel of over 50mm in diameter. That's a good 10mm more than most watches, but a big watch face requires well-honed, massive sinewy forearms, the kind that would embolden you to challenge Popeye to an arm wrestle. If you're possessed with massive ham-hock forearm slabs and have contempt for the diminutive elegantine straps that pass for men's watches these days, you'd be wise to get yourself the Ocean 50, a manly watch that would make Popeye proud.
The two radios above are actually one radio, the $99 Boston Acoustics Horizon Solo. As a radio enthusiast for the last 5 years or so, I am going to go out on a limb and say that the Horizon Solo represents a huge leap in radio innovation, reception, ergonomics, and sound quality, especially when one considers its affordable price point. Let us go over the features that make it clearly superior to its competition (I am not an employee for Boston Acoustics; I am simply assessing its quality in comparison to dozens upon dozens of radios that I own or that I have tried): 1. The sound is big, crisp, bright, detailed, and talk radio sounds intimate. I own the Boston Acoustics Recepter that retails for $150 and the Horizon Solo sounds even better with its 3.5-inch speaker. Final Thoughts: The very capable Boston Acoustics Recepter, which retails for $50 more than the Horizon Solo, should be on its way out soon. It has less features than the Solo; it doesn't even have a headphone jack and sure enough the Solo has one. The Solo gets even better reception than the BAR and it has a replaceable grill so that you can get a variety of colors that suit your taste. Moreover, as you can see from the photos above, you can configure the read-out bezel so that the radio is either vertical or horizontal. My congrats to Boston Acoustics for making a radio that smart people want to buy. For the story of how I by chance stumbled upon the Horizon Solo, which inexplicably was stocked on a Torrance, Ca,Target shelf a month before its official release date, CLICK HERE. Update: I bought a second Horizon Solo because my Tivoli Songbook and Tivoli Model Three were performing miserably. Due to the amount of computer interference I was skeptical about the Horizon Solo's AM/FM sensitivity but it pulls in most stations that the Songbook and Model Three could not and unlike the Model Three there is no signal fade. The performance in my interference-laden office attests to the Horizon Solo's superior tuner. Some caveats: A lot of bugs have been reported, especially pertaining to the sleep and alarm function. Make sure you keep your receipt and warranty. I've been lucky. The 3 I've bought have been relatively bug-free. One problem, however, is that if I tune too quickly to a weak station, the radio emits a clamorous thunder-like sound that can't be stopped unless I reposition the wire FM antenna. But on the whole this is my number-one bedside clock radio. Below is another new offering: The Boston Acoustics Horizon Duo, which retails for about $150 and is being sold atElectronic Warehouse.
2. The interface is easy to use. You simply press the mode button and scroll through the radio bands, the clock, the bass, the treble, etc.
3. The size and shape leaves a small footprint by the bedside. No radio of this size comes close to generating this quality of sound.
4. Now for the most impressive part: The AM/FM reception is amazing. I'm sick of suffering mediocre FM on my Tivoli Model One and Three, my Sangean WR-2. The Horizon Solo leaves these other radios in the dust and it's the least expensive by far. With the Horizon Solo's wire FM antenna hanging below (I don't even bother to elevate it.), the Horizon Solo is grabbing tough-to-get FM stations like 89.3, 88.9, and 103.1 with ease--as good if not better than my legendary Kaito 1103. The tuner is so good, I may have to sell several of my radios throughout the house and replace them with the Horizon Solo. As soon as word spreads about the Horizon Solo's tuner performance, the competition is going to have to go back to their tech department and start all over again. Consumers aren't going to fork out good dough for subpar reception when they can buy a Horizon Solo.

If you're like me, lousy AM reception is so grating it's hardly worth listening to. And if you're like me, you're fed up with the majority of radios that stick a cheap internal AM ferrite antenna as if it's just an afterthought. Having said that, let us look at some strong AM radios and the environmental factors that determine their effectiveness.
Guideline #1: No radio, no matter how strong its AM, can overcome environmental impediments such as steel beams, concrete walls, foil insulation panels, computers, fluorescent lights, printers, scanners, cable boxes, modems, iPod speakers, etc. Don't judge a radio's effectiveness if it's being compromised by these factors.
Guideline #2: A good AM radio can be "too good." What I mean by this is that it can pull in so many AM signals that the station you're tuning into gets "crowded" and you'll need an RF grain and a narrow band option, as exists on the strong AM performer, the C.Crane CSW. In contrast, a strong AM radio, the Sangean PR-D5, works well for me but a mile down the road it is a complete failure because it's lack of a narrow band filter renders it useless next to the power generators. This leads us to our next guideline:
Guideline #3: A great radio may only be as great as its individual environment but may show completely different characteristics in another environment. Therefore, steer away from making absolute judgments about radios. For example, my Boston Acoustics Horizon Solo gives me great AM, but at least two readers are getting nothing static on their Solo's AM dial and they have to return them.
For the remaining guidelines, I must give grateful credit to Ed Strnad:
Guideline #4: AM reception at night will be weaker on some stations because their transmitter is set to reduced power, or the they change the direction of the their transmitter "beam." The FCC requires this of some stations. And as far as I know, AM-HD stations stop transmitting completely in HD at night. In fact, at night and in winter, distant AM stations (AM-DX) should be easier to get due to signal "skip" or bounce which results from the lowering of the ionosphere at nights and in winter.
Guideline #5: A good Earth ground on your radio may reduce static and give better AM reception. Attach a wire to the radio's "GND" antenna terminal and under the screw holding an AC outlet wall-plate, which is a ground.
Guideline #6: Use battery power not AC power for quieter reception.
Guideline #7: Use a signal amplifier like the "Select-A-Tenna" to increase signal strength. But remember a signal must BE there in order to be amplified.
Guideline #8: Operate your radio close to a window. Try different locations.
Guideline #9: A good radio should have a "DX/LOCAL" switch; an even better radio should have a "RF GAIN" control knob. Use the Gain control: too much RF will distort the signal, too weak a signal will be noisy/static-y.
Recommendations: The aforementioned C.Crane CSW (previously the Kaito 2100) and the Sangean PR-D5 are the best I've tested. I've actually gotten BETTER AM with my less expensive PR-D5 and so has another reader from New York. On the other hand, another reader who lives 2 miles away from me, gets signal overload with his PR-D5.
Caveat on the C.Crane CSW: The buttons are hard to press and the quality control is questionable. Mine got distorted after 3 weeks (Kaito version) and an Amazon reviewer has the same complaint for his C.Crane version. For a radio with similar performance but in analog form without presets, you might be better served getting the Eton S350.
I heard Frank Trigg, an MMA fighter and announcer, explain that to be an effective MMA fighter you don't have to have a black belt in any particular martial art. You just need to several brown belts in fighting styles.
Hailing from the mid 1970s and evocative a boombox, my Panasonic RQ-548S cassette AM/FM radio with 7-inch dual cone speaker arrived yesterday in good condition. All the functions, including the cassette player, work fine. The radio is big--9 inches tall and 14 inches across. One slight problem is that the antenna tips one way and tightening it at both sides of the base with a phillips screwdriver have proved feeble. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong.



Wanting to save money on batteries, I thought I'd just use the AC adapter on my Sangean PR-D5, but every time I'd unplug it and unplug it again, I'd get a flash on the screen telling me I was out of power. This flash disabled the radio so that I could not turn it on. I thought my radio might be defective because I don't remember this flash when I had my first PR-D5 a few months ago.
"I think wrist watches had their day. Now they are quaint and superfluous. No one under 25 wears one. Every cellphone tells the time, which is now the younger set's default time-piece, as well as your PC, radio, toaster, TV, car, etc etc etc. Who needs a chunky klunky thing around their wrist anymore?"
My take is that the watch is superfluous as a timepiece indeed. But it is a sartorial add-on. One can dress down in jeans and a t-shirt and give their look "pop" with a striking watch. When it comes to fashion style takes precedence over function.