Thursday, October 6, 2016

Fall Bike

Bicycling in the fall 2016 aka autumn.


 

New discipline in cycling - catch (or escape) the train.


My Radio Shack: Meridian RP-705 Radio

Beside watches and clock, my other major interest is radios, so here is something from my radio blog.

For completion's sake, here is another radio from my collection, and it comes from the bottom of the pile... whatever, meaning it is a cheap radio - more in execution than in actual price as it still cost me the equivalent of 30 dollars at the time.

The radio in question is a 2009 Meridian RP-705 (Меридиан РП-705).


However it is symptomatic of the back-and-forth going nowadays in radio re-branding which affects not only the top- or mid segment (Grunding/Eton/Sangean/Roberts etc.) but also the very bottom.

Because this Meridian is a clone of the Aitkenson International AT-M2630R, in fact, there is a reference to it in the manual.



What's more there is at least one other clone available currently in Russia - the Supra ST-123 (Supra is a distributor of electric and electronic goods operating primarily in Russia and the CIS and pretends to be a Japan brand which it is not).



I wanted to give this radio as an example of the worst in my collection and it probably is, however some use can still be got out of it as you will be able to see in the video below.

A video review and demonstration of operation in Russian.



The box.



It was made for a company called ZAO MiG which has in the meantime (since 2009) disappeared without a trace... but the radio remains and still works just not very well.

Sorry for the backdrop in below pictures - this outhouse needs a new lick of paint. Soon.


As I said I managed to link it to the Aitkenson International AT-M2630R by Aitkenson International Far East Limited of Hong Kong which appears to be a well known firm specializing in this kind of radio appliances on the cheaper end of the spectrum.


Many models of radios can be found, some look interesting,  - DSP / PLL, multi-band (with SW) and so on.


And here is the unit in question - AT M2630R.

More photos of my Meridian.



It is definitely not a good radio, not a fair one - just one notch above very poor but still usable, you know.

My main complaint is too much noise during tuning, reception, some kind self-induced noises, jumpy tuning, etc., all kinds of interference.

But it has power source redundancy, by which I mean that it can be powered from the mains as it has an in-built AC/DC adapter, it can be powered using batteries and it also has an accumulator battery which it can charge while powered from the mains. So in this respect at least it gives you something for your money. 

The charging function works well. I guess it could be useful if you are at a location where there are frequent power outages. Many China radios have this feature, including Degen and Tecsun models. However I don't recall coming across it on Sonys, Grundigs etc., at least not on those in my collection.