I like ergonomics good enough. If you listen to radio while laying in
bed with the radio in your hands - ergonomics not to to bad. press
button left hand and then twist knob with right hand. I wish volume
the control only worked when you press volume button. Get rid of that
stupid delay.

Now I damn near cut off right thumb with my table saw. Did a rip cut
right up the thumb. A cross cut would have sheared the thing all the
way off. So point is ergonomics of radio not as important as they used
to be with two good thumbs. Heheh.

I used to do about 8 hours when they are totally dead when the radio
turns off by itself. I got a couple of sets so I don't really care if
they're charged right up to the tippy top. When I'm on the road I
charge em up with my cigarette lighter port thru a 68ohm 1watt resistor
for about the same time. Now I got one of those Rad Shack chargers to
charge. That was an expensive deal. I think I paid near 25bucks for
the charger and 4 metal hydride batteries.

I am going to make a guess here and say I get about 14hours out of a
charge. I usually play with it for an hour and then put Laura Ingram
on to fall asleep by for another hour. So maybe 2 hours a night for a
week or so. I think maybe you aren't starting with a full charge.
Anyway, 10 hours should do it for ya if batteries good.

Please describe what batteries look like and markings. The last DE1103
I bought had batteries said ETON on em.

There is a DE1103 group at Yahoo groups.

73
NEO


justin david wrote:
On 14 Oct 2006 08:41:08 -0700, wrote:

Based on positive reviews here and elsewhere, and deciding I could live
with its ergonomic idiosyncracies, I just bought a new Kaito KA1103.
So far, I like it well enough, and the ergonomics are even a little
charming. But I have a question about using the radio itself to charge
the included NiMH batteries. It's not clear to me how long to set the
charging timer for, nor whether there is a risk of damage if the
batteries are charged for too long. The spartan "manual" gives a
formula of battery mAh / 100 for the # hours to charge, which in this
particular case of 4 x 1300 mAh batteries is 52 hours? But the maximum
charge time you can set is 23 hours. Does anyone have prior experience
charging the KA1103? After playing with the radio for an hour, the
battery indicator hit the 25% full mark, and I decided to charge them
for 10 hours, based on nothing in particular. Is this too long? Too
short? Anyone know?

Beware of the tuning wheel on the 1103 going south. Mine did and so
did many others- maybe Kaito fixed that problem.