Paul,

The Grundig Yacht Boy (YB) 550 PE is being sold in the North American
market. In EURO-Land it is being sold as the "ETON" Yacht Boy (YB)
550. In China it is made by Tecsun GEM and sold as the Tecsun PL-230
which is a repackaging of the Tecsun PL-200.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Grundi...os/message/120
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Grundi...os/message/102
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Grundi...os/message/115
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Grundi...0/message/1213
[ETON] http://www.etoncorp.com/worldwide/yb550.asp


Of the four 'morphs' of what is basically the same radio the Tecsun
PL-200 which uses "AA" Batteries vice "AAA" Batteries in the
PL-230/YB-550 is potentially the better radio.
http://www.radiointel.com/review-tecsunpl200.htm


~ RHF
..
..
= = = Paul
= = = wrote in message . ..
The Grundig YB-550 is indeed the Eton 550. It is made in China. The
YB-550 is about 2/3 the size of the YB500. The YB-550 has 200 station
memories and uses 3 AA batteries. I have not tried the memories, I
usually do not use them. The goto memory function works very well. I
tried all the frequencies listed in Monitoring Times for 8 pm central
time that broadcast to North America and I had no trouble picking them
up from the Dallas,Texas area on the wip antenna. As you would expect,
the radio feels pretty cheaply made. The radio also comes with a fine
tuning knob that allows tuning in 1 khz increments. I did not find
this feature of great use. It covers all the major sw bands. The sound
is very good on AM/FM/SW. It has a jack for an external antenna. It
also comes with an S meter. I am not sure how accurate it is. Most of
the signals appeared to be either 1 or 2 or 5 in strength. The radio
also has a sleep timer and an alarm which I have not tried. It has
switches for local/dx , lock/unlock and music/news. I will try it side
by side with some of my other radios and try to report a comparison
later.

RHF,

MY mistake earlier when I mentioned that the PL-230/YB-550PE uses 3
AAA batteries.. Bad typo! It uses 3 AA batteries.

The PL-200 uses 2 AA batteries as you mentioned though.

Ulis