Hi, all!

Just received the new Passport to WorldBand Radio 2005 edition
and herewith some comments:

For me, better than last year. (If anybody recalls, last year
I was one of the few people that got a defective copy with missing
and duplicated pages in the "blue pages" section; that was promptly
replaced by Grove upon my report of that. I also had some
correspondence regarding the out-of-date program-schedule info for
the BBC that had not been updated since the 2003 edition; that
turned out to be due to problems (family deaths, etc.) at the
production company.)

First thing I looked at in the Blue Pages was to see if they
were listing RN's new and unusual "9345 kHz" South Asian English
frequency from Tashkent at 1400-1600 UT. It's not there. Guess RN
decided on and publicized that too late for inclusion in the
database. Irritating but understandable.

The one thing that does annoy me of what I've noticed so far is
that there is no mention of RCI's mid-day to the Americas service
in the "What's On" section. That provides great CBC programming
to the greater part of the US, an area that cannot reliably get
this programming via medium wave stations from across the border.
It is certainly worthy of mention. (Even if PWBR is intended as a
worldwide publication, isn't the US readership their main audience?)

These RCI broadcasts *ARE* listed in the Blue Pages. As a matter of
fact, since I had not gotten the new schedule info for RCI after
10/31, I had to tune around on an analog radio to find it on 15180 kHz
and then verify it on my Satellit 800, and then found it listed in
the Blue Pages. It would have been easier if PWBR had mentioned this
and cited the 17765 Summer and 15180 Winter frequencies in the
appropriately-timed (2000 UT range) "What's On" entries, which now
only contain some RCI entries for other-area-directed broadcasts.

The other thing I noticed in the "What's On" section is that the
person doing the BBC-program notes seems to dislike or ignore what
I find to be the best stuff on the BBC, the science programs
Discovery and Science In Action. Every time he refers to the
time blocks when these are aired, he repeats the mention of other
programs in that weekday-daily "science block", Health Matters and
One Planet, but never mentions the others. Why repeat the same
words when one could vary the text? And why not mention that this
IS a "science block", when the BBC on-air announcements refer to it
in a similar way?

The receiver-review section pleased me in that it contains reviews
for many of the newly-available little cheapy Chinese SW radios.
They are limiting it to digital-readout ones only, which is, I
suppose, reasonable, though it pains my completionist soul. I was
glad to read a thorough pan of the Coby model that had been found
at Big Lots by some in mid-2004, and which I missed. But since it
is described as being so utterly bad, I am now quite content that
I never bought any. The omission of analog-tuned models, though,
meant that there is no mention of the Walgreens-sold "Lifelong"
teensy-tiny AM/FM/SW radio, listing for $20 and recently on sale at
$15. The important thing about that one is that it is an introduction
to SW radios for millions in the US, who will never go to Radio Shack
and see any other SW radio, but who will see this thing in the
Walgreens Drug ads that blanket much of the nation. Even the
ubiquitous Bell+Howell isn't as widely seen; only those who get the
mail-order catalogs that list that are exposed to that model. I wish
it had been reviewed, too. My experience with the Bell+Howell showed
it to be pretty wretched, and that kept me from buying the Lifelong
since it is even smaller and I expected it to be as bad. But I'd like
to see some objective evaluation and am willing to be proved wrong.

The other minor nit about the receiver-review section is that they
are repeating the use of manufacturer-supplied graphics of the
Grundig/Eton/Tecsun Satellit 800 that show impossible displays on
the radio's LCD screen (simultaneous FM-only and SW-only indicators
turned on, for example) instead of taking their own pictures showing
real-life displays. All the ads do the same, of course, so it isn't
unusual. Speaking of ads, the repetition of the same Eton ads over and
over and over gets a bit old. I realize their selling the ad space
keeps the book's cost down, but some variation from ad to ad would
be appreciated.

Anybody else out there have comments about the book? While this might
read as if my impression is negative, it isn't. I do like it enough
to buy it every year with my own money, after all. I just think that
it could be better (if the producers thought more like me :-).

73 and regards, Will Martin (St. Louis, MO)
(dxld)