Sunday, March 21, 2004
Taking a break from prepping for the class I am teaching on Information Architecture, I headed down to the local Radio Shack in The Beaches and finally picked up something I’ve been meaning to get for a while now – a "wind-up" radio. Given the blackout we had last summer (and a few smaller ones in between) this little Grundig radio has been on my radar soon after. I noticed from a local flier that it was on sale, so I made the effort to finally go and get one.
Okay, the wind-up factor is pretty cool – 60 turns of the crank will deliver about an hour’s worth of radio. It also contains a little light, so the radio doubles as a low-power flashlight. The dynamo inside it feeds a couple of rechargeable batteries inside it, and it can also take regular AA batteries if you somehow run out of steam yourself and can’t find the power to crank it.
I took it home, and after finishing off my work on the material for the next class, I drew a bath, cranked the radio and sat back and soaked while listening to an installment of The Ongoing History of New Music on CFNY. It is a well-made radio, though I was disappointed that the crank handle wasn’t made out of a more durable plastic (or metal!) and opted to go for an extended warranty on that basis alone. The sound is also a bit on the tinny side, but I would guess that better bass response would come at the price of more power, so a trade-off was made. There was no hint of the power wearing off by the time the show finished an hour later.
Not a bad little radio. I just hope we need to use it too much in the future...
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