I can't say that has been my experience. I listen to the BBC for hours.
Look, it's an analog radio. It's not like a Drake R8 or something like that.
If you're into digital tuning, the S350/BCL2000 probably won't satisfy you.
But it's an outstanding medium-sized portable for the price.
Pete

"Jay Heyl" wrote in message
...
[snipped]
I view the BCL-2000 as an outstanding MW portable at a great price. The
fact that it also tunes SW is a big plus, but SW is not its best
feature. If you mostly want to tune around the SW bands to see what you
can find and occasionally do some casual listening, you might be happy
with it. If you want to tune in the BBC and listen for an hour or two,
you would probably do better with something else. If the latter is the
case, the Degen/Kaito 1102 has been getting some good reviews. You might
also want to check ebay for a used DX-398 (rebadged Sangean ATS-909).
They've been going for $100-$125 recently.

-- Jay

"Pierre L" wrote in message ble.rogers.com...
I can't say that has been my experience. I listen to the BBC for hours.
Look, it's an analog radio. It's not like a Drake R8 or something like that.
If you're into digital tuning, the S350/BCL2000 probably won't satisfy you.
But it's an outstanding medium-sized portable for the price.

I agree with you, Pierre. The BCL2000 is an outstanding radio for the
money. I'm not at all disappointed that I bought one. But the reality
is that it has a few shortcomings, and these make it less than optimal
for certain situations. I was just trying to point out these flaws in
case they were of concern to any potential purchasers.

As to your experience listening to the BBC, are you saying you aren't
seeing the drift that others are experiencing? Do you normally run
off batteries or off the mains? R. Australia was booming in last
night and I listened on my BCL2000 for about an hour. I had to retune
four times in the first 30 minutes because the radio had drifted so
far as to make the signal almost unlistenable. After 30 minutes it
seemed to stabilize. I always run off batteries, so I don't benefit at
all from the stay-warm solution Tecsun implemented for when the radio
is plugged into the mains. I'm wondering if this might explain our
different experiences in this regard.

-- Jay

I took my BCL 2000 outside and listened for a couple of hours today. It's
such a sweet radio, but most of the time, there's too much RF noise in my
house to get much use out of its sensitivity. I mainly use it to listen to
AM talk or maybe a ballgame or maybe an oldies station on FM. Dxing isn't
possible inside our house right now. We have a cable modem and four
computers all networked with WI-FI. The radio noise is unbearable with
everything going at once.

One thing I noticed today about my 2000, the radio's battery indicator is
one step below full. I got my radio in Feb 2003. On the day I got it, I
bought some cheap Panasonic alkalines (4/$2) to put in it. If the radio had
been a dud, I didn't want to waste money on good batteries. But, now it's
been 13 months, and those cheap batteries are still going (sorry Eveready)
strong.

Oh, to be fair and balanced, there is one thing I wish I could change about
this radio that really drives me crazy. The fine tuning mechanism is ok on
MW and FM, but on shortwave, especially over 15 MHz, it's incredibly tough
to fine tune those signals.

That's one of the things I also like about analog radios. The batteries last
such a long time. I never really thought of this as a problem with the two
Sony digitals I had, because I live in a region that had never had a
technological or natural catastrophe of any kind in my lifetime. But then,
we were without power for 5 days during the big ice storm of Jan 1998 (right
in the city too), and then again this past summer, we were without power
almost 24 hours. 24 hours wasn't too bad, but man, it wasn't easy to find a
store with batteries in stock during that ice storm. I think that's when my
then love affair with things digital began to wane

About the drifting. It drifts a little bit on SW, and the digital frequency
readout seems very precise in showing it, but, in my experience, not that
much for analog tuning. I don't personally find it a problem. I've so far
only used mine on batteries. I haven't tried the AC adaptor.

Pierre


"Corbin Ray" wrote in message
...
I took my BCL 2000 outside and listened for a couple of hours today. It's
such a sweet radio, but most of the time, there's too much RF noise in my
house to get much use out of its sensitivity. I mainly use it to listen to
AM talk or maybe a ballgame or maybe an oldies station on FM. Dxing isn't
possible inside our house right now. We have a cable modem and four
computers all networked with WI-FI. The radio noise is unbearable with
everything going at once.

One thing I noticed today about my 2000, the radio's battery indicator is
one step below full. I got my radio in Feb 2003. On the day I got it, I
bought some cheap Panasonic alkalines (4/$2) to put in it. If the radio
had
been a dud, I didn't want to waste money on good batteries. But, now it's
been 13 months, and those cheap batteries are still going (sorry Eveready)
strong.

Oh, to be fair and balanced, there is one thing I wish I could change
about
this radio that really drives me crazy. The fine tuning mechanism is ok on
MW and FM, but on shortwave, especially over 15 MHz, it's incredibly tough
to fine tune those signals.