I think I mentioned the Yaesu VR-120 sometime last year. Still have it. It's exceptionally tiny and can fit in a shirtpocket, but is still rugged enough to toss in a daypack and not worry about. Frequency coverage is, as we say, DC to light. (100KHz to 1.2GHz) I took it on one trip where it was invaluable just for the weather reports to plan the next day's paddling. When you're paddling islands in Lake Michigan weather is pretty unpredictable. In the evening I hung it in my hammock and listened to the news on the BBC. I'm tempted to try connecting a loops antenna and seeing if I can't get LW beacons for direction finding. Two additions helped: One, a small earphone. You don't get much volume from a 1" speaker. Two, an additional antenna. The supplied whip is fine for local broadcast and weather, but not great for short wave broadcast. I took a BNC connector and soldered it to a dozen feet of small diameter, teflon coated, stranded wire, and soldered an small alligator clip on the far end. That way I could either clip the antenna to a branch to support it vertically or, if a large metal structure was handy, clip it to that. You can also configure the radio, via keypresses, to use the earphone jack as an antenna connector. -- mike ------------------------- Michael Edelman medelman_at_ameritech.net http://www.foldingkayaks.org http://www.findascope.com *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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