The Kaito WRX911 is the perfect backpacking radio, buy it before REI
finds it, and sells it to you for $49 USD. It looks like their parent
maker sells them for $8 USD in china.

I'm still using the first pair of alkaline batteries i put in them and
i must have played the thing now and then for almost a year. It's
just a very simple and very sensitive radio. It's amazing what you
can hear on it outside, holding it in your hand pointing it with just
its little antenna in a deliberate direction.

The WRX-911 has a nice speaker on it, it has a good 'bright' sound
that is great for human speech. Speech is intelligible on that radio.

FM isn't very selective, and there's no light for the bands but
otherwise the thing is great.

I think you'll like the R-9700 DX, it's got a nice amber dial light on
it, and you can guess the frequency within 5-15 kHz, the bands are
nice and wide. FM is more sensitive and selective. The speaker
sounds nice but the 'bright' sound of the WRX911 makes speech on the
WRX911 a little bit more intelligible.

The R-9700 DX gets FM in stereo if it's a strong station. It has an
antenna jack and it comes with both a wire and a roll-up antenna for
travelling. If you don't care about stereo through headphones, you
can get FM radio stations on it from some distance.



On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 21:58:07 -0500, "Pierre L"
wrote:

I already have a Kaito WRX911 (Tecsun something I forget) and I like it so
much I just ordered an R-9700DX a couple of days ago. It hasn't arrived yet,
so I can't comment. I've had a number of digitally-tuned radios over the
years, but I really don't like digital anything (the computer I'm typing
this on is a necessary evil). Pushing buttons just was never like scanning
the bands manually to see what's there, like in my younger days. I had a
7600GR I sold not long ago. Great radio in other ways, but what an exercise
in frustration when you just want to scan the bands.
Pierre



"Altawaowr" wrote in message
.. .
Excellent choice. TV sucks, and it does more and more every day.

How about trying a R-9700 DX? That's a wonderful radio and the price
is right. Mine came from China via air mail for $26 plus $20
shipping.


http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tegory=15 051

It has great sound and is very sensitive. FM and AM are good too.
The only thing I don't like about it is it doesn't tune down to 9335
to hear North Korea in the middle of the night. But if they fire some
missiles off at anybody I think it will be on the news most anywhere
anyway. Oh and it doesn't have digital tuning, so you can tell you're
near the frequency you want but you can't tell if you're right on it.

Shortwave is noisy and sometimes fades a lot. This can drive people
crazy, especially women. I like it though because you can hear
nature. Plus if you live in the United States there's tons of
religious stations with Southern accents. *vomit*

What part of the world do you live in? Here on the west coast of the
US, you don't hear cool things like the Voice of Turkey or Radio Cairo
like you can in the eastern US. But you can hear Australia and New
Zealand all night. Between 10 and midnight there isn't that much
going on on shortwave unless you like Radio Havana. Now there's some
low technology.

Most anyone here will tell you, build yourself an antenna. It can
just be a long wire outside to hook up to your radio. If you get the
R-9700DX radio it comes with two wires you can use. Have fun and
welcome.



On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 08:56:10 -0600, wrote:

Im thinking of dumping my cable TV. That will leave me with only two
local TV stations to get via an antenna.

Im considering buying a shortwave receiver that I can listen to while
doing things around the house.

Is there interesting programming available via shortwave? Is my idea
sound? What good receivers are worth looking at?