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Hello friend......I'm still looking for a miro or mini cd p[layer to use with my Henry Kloss 88 radio. The only one I am aware of is the Tivoli, which is priced above my budget. Any ideas? Thank you very much.Pete
This Toshiba 4-Band looks great. One used model recently sold for $100.
Hugo has apprised us of a Sanyo RP-8700 bidding on eBay. Current bid is $44.
The Invicta Russian Diver Quinotaur 4578, named after the Greek Myth, a bullish sea monster with five horns, retails for $675. Amazon sells it for $250. I found mine on eBay for $200 plus $10 shipping.
News of Michael Jackson's passing and Farrah Fawcett's has a strange feel, stranger than news reports of deaths in Iraq or Afghanistan because, as Salman Rusdhie once said, celebrities populate our imaginations the way Greek gods filled the minds of the Greeks thousands of years ago.
Their lives are, in our imagination at least, grander, more elevated, somehow demi-god like. And when they pass away, the idea of mortality, usually so distant and abstract, takes on a power it normally does not have.
I called the Sangean rep today and asked him for some info on the PR-D9. He said he had never heard of it was completely flummoxed when I explained that the PR-D9 is featured on the Sangean website albeit without a photo.
Since the very first time I saw this model listed on E-Bay a couple years ago, I've wanted one of these: The Montgomery Ward Airline GEN-1494A. I guess the thing that attracted me to this radio the most is the handsome looks. I like the symmetry of the dual tuning dials, divided by the power meter. I like the contrast of brushed aluminum and charcoal color plastics, encased in clear acrylic dial covers. I like the large but not huge size of the receiver. Simply, I like everything about this radio's styling. I wouldn't change anything---not even the orange and white frequency information, which looks great on the dark gray/black. The materials are not quite up to Sony or Panasonic standards, but there's nothing to be ashamed of here. It's good quality stuff, certainly comparable to any Sharp or Sanyo of a similar vintage. It's in that Toshiba/Hitachi category as far as I can tell. Performance wise, it's a winner. I was astounded by the shortwave reception---very, very close to matching the Sony ICF-5800 that I recently sold. It picks up shortwave signals that most of my other radios are unable to track. FM sound is strong, AM crisp. It's very capable of getting the full compliment of AM-FM stations that my other good radios can receive. After the stellar shortwave performance, I was surprised that it didn't perform well on the PSB 1 or PSB 2 options. They were pretty dead---and my old Arvin radios generally get activity on these bands. Maybe it's just the night and the location. Speaker sound is another high grade. While it's not as powerful as the Panasonic 888, it has a pleasing sound. The "tone" adjustment actually does its job too. It's equally good for talk or music. This is a well balanced radio that I can heartily recommend. I have seen several of these over the years, and have bid on a few of them. I was never able to wrangle one until this one failed to cross the $30.00 mark, and I snatched it up in the closing minutes. It needed a little cleaning---and to get it to work on batteries, I had to use steel wool to remove corrosion from the battery compartment contacts----but aside from those minor issues, it's pretty darn nice. Perfect antenna, no major dings and a real player. Is it a keeper? For me, there aren't many keepers. I generally buy radios at what I consider a value price. After cleaning them up and playing with them for a few months, I'm willing to throw them back to keep funding my hobby and charting new territory---such as a very recent interest in old tube radios. But I have to say, the great shortwave performance, on this Ward model will make it a tough decision to let this go. Like my Panasonic 888, Zenith Trans-Oceanic 7000 and Grundig Ocean Boy 820, this Ward Airline 1494 has virtues that might make it a permanent fixture. That's pretty strong company that this radio finds itself in.
I was six years old. My father and I were in our apartment living room in San Jose, California, watching Green Acres. More interested in space travel than I was in the clash between Eddie Albert's bucolic quest and Eva Gabor’s lavish creature comfort habits, I asked my father how far planet Earth was from the Sun. Without missing a beat, my father continued staring at the television and answered 93,000,000 miles. I was stunned by what appeared to be his omniscience. I asked him how could a human being know the distance between the Earth and the Sun?
He answered, “Because I’m your father. And fathers know
everything.”
I was in awe of my father’s power and felt compelled to ask
him a question every time I felt perplexed by some puzzling situation. That
puzzling situation occurred the next day when my father took me to the grand
opening of a Taco Bell, which was considered exotic for featuring “Mexican”
food.
The perplexing situation I faced was the teenagers behind
the Taco Bell counter. They all had splotches on their oily faces, this being
the era before antibiotics were prescribed by dermatologists and Oxy10 was
readily available at drug stores.
I asked my father what those unsightly bumps were on the
employees’ faces. He told me they were called pimples. I then asked my father
why these young people behind the counter had to suffer this repelling
condition. Without missing a beat, my father said, “Aristotle tells us that God
gives teenagers pimples to teach them humility.”
This one sentence amazed me. Number one, my father was
showing that he was well versed in Aristotle who I vaguely understood to be a
famous philosopher that only smart people would know about. Number two, the
idea that God had to teach teenagers humility suggested that the adolescent
years were wrought with egregious personality defects that required some kind
of divine corrective.
Overcome with anxiety, I looked up at my father and said,
“Dad, someday will God give me pimples?”
He furrowed his brow pensively and said, “I don’t know,
son. It all depends.”
I know what he meant by his portentous demeanor. If I
became arrogant during adolescence, God would send a plague of pimples upon me.
But if I was polite and humble, I might be spared.
In the mid 1970s during my sophomore year in high school, I
broke out with a bad case of acne requiring antibiotics. At the time I was an
oversized bodybuilder who had developed a case of chest-thumping braggadocio to
conceal my insecurities. God was righteously sending a plague down on me to put
me back in line.
Since that time, I’ve combed through the works of Aristotle
and have never found reference to pimples and their connection to teenage
arrogance. But I’m sure that Aristotle had to have said it because, after all,
my father quoted him, and as my father said during an episode of Green Acres, fathers know everything.
Upon arriving home today, I found that my G8 order had arrived. It also happened to be a day for enhanced FM reception from the Central Valley, which I normally don't get because I'm on the Oakland side of the East Bay hills. I brought out my Degen DE1123 and compared it to the G8. They're both excellent and were nearly comparable on FM. The Degen was better on a couple of stations; the G8 was better on a few others. The G8 was able to pick up audio from KVIE-TV Sacramento's analog "nightlight" broadcast on channel 6. The G8 doesn't disable its extensible antenna when headphones are plugged in, and that antenna can be angled around; the Degen's antenna can't. For FM, I think it's a draw between them. They're both excellent, firmly establishing that DSP is the new standard in FM reception.
For AM, I think the Grundig is better. The audio quality is better -- less muffled, indicating that a slightly wider audio bandwidth is in use. It also seems more sensitive and selective. My test station in Oakland is KZSF at 1370 in San Jose -- the G8 gets it reasonably well with some background noise. But the real stunner came at the upper end of the dial. KLIV at 1590 in San Jose is a fringe-ish but consistent signal. This radio was also able to pick up KUBA at 1600 in Yuba City -- a first at this location. It was weak but easily readable. I should note that there are "birdies" when tuning. There's one at about 880 kHz, and then quite a few more starting at 1200 or so.
I like being able to tune with a thumbwheel rather than skew buttons. Advantage there goes to the G8. But the G8's auto-tuning memory gets too many false positives on FM, mostly from IBOC sidebands. The Degen's way of calling up presets feels more logical to me. Advantage there goes to the Degen.
For $50, the G8 has to be the bargain of the decade for FM listeners. AM listeners might like it, but may want to try other radios.
For Gary DeBock's G8 review, CLICK HERE.
The seller doesn't give the call number of this rare Panasonic RF-1170, which may keep it off the radar screen. Starting bid is $10.
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