Herculodge

America’s Downward Shift: When a Home Was No Longer a Home

Half asleep at 2 A.M. as I waited for the one-week-old twin girls to wake for their next feeding, I heard an economist on the radio say that America took a turn for the worst when Americans no longer bought homes to live in. Somehow it got in their minds (from greedy banks, greed in general?) that a house was an investment or something to leverage for more money. It was during this Great Shift that we built a false economy and fell like a house of cards. When the home was no longer a home, something bad happened to our character and now our pocket books will suffer for a long time, even as we bail out the banks and give bonuses to their CEOs (great lesson in accountability).

This same economist predicted more falling house values and a bear economy that will last until 2016. 

Diasonic DDR-4500 Recorder Radio

Ante has apprised us of the DDR-4500 Recorder Radio with 32 MG of memory. Anyone familiar with the Diasonic company?

Radio Russ' Philips Philetta 284 de Luxe BD284U

 

Here's another article about a radio from my collection:

This is a Philips Philetta 284 de Luxe BD284U made in Germany circa 1958/1959. It has 7 tubes including the electric tuning eye. This radio has a pleasing and warm sound playing through the original 50 year old 5 x 7 " speaker. One problem I have noticed with my older radios is that the paper cone speakers age differently. All have degraded over the years to the point where they don't really do the radio justice. When connected to a modern speaker, the Philetta has an impressive sound with resonant bass and crisp treble. It has a tone control located behind the volume control which actually seems to attenuate the bass response in the upper half of its range. It's not extremely loud since it has the equivalent of a 50C5 (45B5) for an output driver but it easily fills a living room with a very "civilized" tone.

It is a series filament circuit and all the tubes are of the European variety: (UCC85 UCH81 UF89 UABC80 UM80 UL84 UY85) There are equivalents available with more recognizable designations: (26AQ8 19D8 12DA6 27AK8 19BR5 45B5 38A3).

The AM performance is quite good with fresh tubes and the built in 6 " ferrite rod. The FM performance is very dependent on the antenna being used but it seemed susceptible to crosstalk from strong adjacent stations with average sensitivity by todays standards. I didn't have much luck with Shortwave unless it was a really strong station. It's hard to tune SW because it covers such a large chunk of frequencies on one band (6-12 MHz).

I bought this radio at a flea market at a tractor pull and antique farm equipment exhibition in Kinzer, PA for $20. The guy selling it was mainly dealing in antique Ford tractor parts and he seemed to be glad to get rid of it. I considered myself lucky because everything worked when I slowly powered it up with a rheostat except the FM and tuning eye. When I restored the radio, everything still looked fairly new underneath. I didn't need to swap out any capacitors or resistors. I bought a complete set of tubes for it and replaced the burned-out pilot lights and it was like new again.

I'm kind of stuck trying to finish the cabinet to my satisfaction. The glue for the gold trim strip is oozing out and is hard as a rock as well as being unsightly. The off-white finish surrounding it is extremely delicate and will easily wipe off with only a mild detergent and soft cloth. Note the blemish to the left of the band selector buttons that I caused trying to remove some dirt. I'm leaving well enough alone for now rather than face repainting it.

The Philetta was another lucky find in an unlikely place for an outrageously low price for its condition. Not all acquisitions go this well or provide such satisfaction. There is one on eBay right now for $49.99 as-is with a defective FM section:  http://bit.ly/dbDueW

 

Wisdom from Our Pediatrician, Day One

  
 

Carrie and I brought our daughters to the pediatrician, visit one, for their first shots. We had a lot of questions and some things we learned stand out:

One: Similac and Enfamil are trusted brands because these big companies have the money to do extensive testing, but Costco Kirkland brand formula, much cheaper, is good enough that the CEO of Little Company of Mary says that Kirkland is the brand she uses for her infant.

Two: Keeping our twins in a room lighted with natural sunlight from 12-4 P.M. and lots of healthy noise will help the babies sleep more at night. 

Make Sure You Get the Latest Batch of the Grundig G3

Travers writes:

Here's a link to a review done by Jay Allen of RadioIntel. Basically the early production G3's had pretty bad issues with sync and other functions that later productions worked out. If you have a problem radio contact Eton and they should exchange it. 

People who have exchanged their G3's had good customer services and ended up with much better radios. The latest batch are so good they will sync when the radio barely has any signal! 

I'll probably get a G3 later this spring after I get my tax return.

Angelo Writes About the Hypocrisy of Broadcasters

Addressing the suspension of Tony Kornheiser, Angelo writes: 

Rush Limbaugh on Donavan McNabb. IMUS on the Rutgers basketball team. Jimmy the Greek on black athletes. Now, TK on a 48 year old woman wearing clothing more appropriate for a 28 year old woman. I don't have to defend their comments, but I do defend the people who made the comments. The common bond isn't really first amendment or free speech rights---that normally addresses political free speech and persecution by the government in my opinion. 

But really, the common bond is spineless employers who hire these people because they are provacative and controversial (in Kornheiser's case, rude and sarcastic---that's why people loved reading him for so many years in the Washington Post, and that's why he went from a small local radio show to ESPN television). Anyway, these networks hire people for these traits----then suspend them or fire them as soon as the heat is on. I think it's time "normal" people start to become dumb activists too. The way Al Sharpton intimidates a network into firing someone by threatening sponsor boycotts? I think it's our turn to threaten sponsor boycotts if a network FIRES someone or suspends them for being who they are and making controversial comments. 

I'm consistent too: I would never call for Keith Olberman to be fired for lambasting someone I like---and in fact I sometimes tune into his show, or Ed Shultz, just to hear their views. If they "cross the line" (I'm not sure who exactly draws the line.), I'm not offended---it is who they are and why they were hired and in fact, why I'm watching them. Same for Limbaugh or Michael Savage.

Home Depot Selling the RIDGID Worksite Radio

Ante has apprised us of the RIDGID Worksite radio selling at Home Depot. It appears to have a digital tuner. I wonder who makes it.

Moogbass has this to say about this offering:

This has been at Home Depot for a while (a year or more). While I've never owned one, apparently the sensitivity of the radio is VERY poor. I "played" with one in the store and couldn't receive one station. I blamed the concrete and steel building, but maybe it was the radio. Too bad--the radio looks good (my opinion) and has some serious speakers inside.

There's a Blue Monster in the Room: Geeking-Out with the Sangean U3 As a Bedside Radio

 

(Re-post)

I just compared my Sangean U3 performance with my C.Crane CCR-2 and the U3 is the easy victor. No hiss through the earbuds on 89.3 FM, no night-time background noise on 570 AM, better speaker sound.

 

Ergonomics may prove a different matter and I don't know how long my wife will allow the Blue Beast to rest by my bedside. 

 

Now if only Sangean would make a smaller version of this for the bedside. Then I could get this outstanding performance without putting a Blue Frankenstein next to my bed. 

How Big of a TV Should You Get? Depends on Whom You Ask

(Re-post)

I've been casually researching the best TV to get and my living room positions viewers 8 feet from the screen. So how big should my new LCD TV be? Depends on whom you ask. My wife's uncle told me that "people in the know" would recommend going no bigger than 40 inches since at 8 feet a bigger TV would highlight defects in imaging. But CNETsuggests I can go up to 65 inches. 

But the LCD Buying Guide offers a distance-size calculator which at 8 feet suggests a screen of 32 inches, half the previous recommendation. 

But the Practical Home Theater Guide differs, offering the 2-to-5 Principle, stated as thus: "For optimum TV viewing distance, the nearest seating position should be limited to approximately twice the screen width . . . "

Then there's Crutchfield, which offers a guide that agrees with my uncle's 40-inch recommendation. 

Bottom-line is I'd to stick the TV in the living room on a trial basis and see how it looks. If I were so privileged, I'd like to sample various LCD and Plasma models. But my research tells me to get a 40- or 46-inch Samsung LCD 1080 with 120 Hz (which means refresh rate is faster and images look better). Now that I've narrowed down the focus, the fun is gone and I'm content with keeping my Toshiba conventional TV until the Samsung price reduces to a $1,000 or so. 

(Re-post)

I've been casually researching the best TV to get and my living room positions viewers 8 feet from the screen. So how big should my new LCD TV be? Depends on whom you ask. My wife's uncle told me that "people in the know" would recommend going no bigger than 40 inches since at 8 feet a bigger TV would highlight defects in imaging. But CNETsuggests I can go up to 65 inches. 

Russ Stanton's Review of the Sangean WR-3 Table Top Radio

 

(Re-post)

I've been using the Sangean WR-3 for almost a year now and still consider it my "A" radio. I had both the WR-1 and the WR-2 before I got this and was hoping that the WR-3 would be twice as nice as the WR-2 due to it being a stereo radio. I wasn't disappointed and have only some minor quibbles after having it on my bedside table all these months.

The sound is very good, better than the Bose stereo system in my opinion. A friend who owns the Bose system was blown away by it in a side-by-side comparison. For some reason, Sangean likes to make their products heavy on the bass side and the WR-3 is no exception. You have the option to adjust the bass and treble from -7 to +7, just like the WR-2. I have to turn the bass down all the way (-7) for talk radio to avoid getting a muddy sound. Listening to music, I seldom have to jack up the bass past the flat setting of 0. I like a lot of bass capability but this is ridiculous. (The worst offender is the WR-1 which has no tone adjustment at all. It has impressive bass response, just too much of it. I wonder if the new WR-11 is any better in this regard?)

AM sensitivity is outstanding. I have both a Select-A-Tenna and a CCrane twin coil antenna and neither one makes any difference to the WR-3. If the WR-3 can't grab the signal, it just ain't there to receive. Sangean must have made good use of the available room and installed a good size ferrite rod antenna. I would even put sensitivity on a par with my Sangean ATS 909 shortwave set. My location is almost exactly 50 miles from both Philadelphia and Baltimore and the WR-3 is sensitive to the point that I am bringing in 2 or more stations on the same frequency at night. 

FM performance is also excellent for my location. They ship it with a telescoping antenna that gives pretty good results. To really see what it could do, I hooked up my CCrane FM Reflect antenna and was very pleased with the reception. It performs right up there with my commercial-grade rack mount Parasound TDQ-150. The only thing in my arsenal that's better is the legendary Accuphase T-100. 

The CD player performs flawlessly and it also plays MP3 CD's with no problems.
One of the reasons I purchased the WR-3 in the first place was its ability to play MP3 files on either a USB memory stick or an SD card. This capability makes the WR-3 a great unit to use for parties because it can literally play music for days without repeating a song. 

 

The few negatives I have are the following:

- The WR-3 is basically useless without the remote control. All you can do without it is adjust the volume and turn the unit on and off. Since the remote is rather small and easily misplaced, I ordered a backup remote from http://remotes.com/ and got their customized replacement rather than another OEM unit which they also offer. I was hoping it would have a stronger output than the original, which it does, because of another weak point the WR-3 has:

- The remote control sensitivity is the worst I have ever seen on any device. You literally have to be pointing the remote directly at the unit. Trying to get it to work off-axis is an exercise in frustration, even with the dual-LED remote from remotes.com. Bright sunshine makes the situation even worse. The remote I got from remotes.com has a longer range but doesn't help with the off-axis problem.

- Sometimes I like to listen to audio books and the file sizes can be fairly large, some with runtimes of an hour or more. While the WR-3 has the ability to fast forward, it does so at a snail's pace. (This applies to the SD/USB function, not the CD function which is fine.) Holding the Seek button down for 1 minute will only advance the time by 5 minutes. You'd have to hold the button down for 6 minutes to get halfway through a 1 hour file! They should have it set up to increase the fast forward speed the longer you hold down the button.

- I know this is really nit-picking but the USB socket is installed upside down.

In conclusion, the WR-3 is a fantastic radio that does everything well and looks great doing it. Mine has a beautiful black piano finish that would look great in any room in the house.

I should receive my Acoustic Research AV100B this Wednesday and I'm curious to see if it will displace the WR-3 as my "A" radio.