Traveling Executively

I need another radio like another hole in my head, so I had no intention of buying another, but Woot made me an offer I could not refuse: a $90 Eton Grundig Executive Traveler for only $52 (sales tax and shipping included).

Woot has great deals and over the years, I have been a good customer, but I do not recall them ever offering a hobbyist type radio. So when this deal came along, I had to investigate especially since I was not familiar with this particular model.

I searched the Internet for reviews and found one by Jay Allen, who claimed that the Executive Traveler "offers the best AM reception I have seen yet in this size and price category among DSP equipped designs."

Note that Jay's review was published in September 2015, so that statement may not be true two years later, but that made no difference to me. Besides a hot AM receiver, the radio had other features that I found attractive (like RDS on FM) and I was sold.

I ordered the radio on June 30 and it arrived yesterday. I immediately opened the box, installed four AA batteries and began playing radio.

AM reception was excellent. Wall-to-wall stations from one end of the band to the other. After hearing stations from all over eastern halves of Canada and the USA, I performed the 1070 test.

It is very difficult to hear anything much on 1070 with 50,000 watt's of WTIC on 1080, 12 miles from house. I have logged six stations on 1070, four with a C.Crane CC Skywave and two with an ELAD FDM-S2/SW2. Nothing with my other radios and unless conditions are exceptional, nothing with the Skywave or FDM-S2/SW2. Conditions were decent last night, but the Executive Traveler heard nothing but WTIC's slop on 1070. Trying to give my new radio the once over, I only listened once on 1070, so I will try a few more times tonight.

I concentrated on AM last night and only listened briefly on FM, LW and SW, so I will spend more time on those bands before I say anything, but the AM performance is pretty pretty good.

I do have two complaints.

Evidently, English was not the first language of the writer of the radio's manual and some of the instructions require repeated reading to figure out what's what. The description for setting the local and world clocks was particularly muddy (to me) and it took a half dozen attempts before I figured out how to set the clocks correctly.

The other negative is that the labels of the various buttons and controls are too small for my 66-year-old eyes, but that is a personal problem and I am sure younger whippersnappers will not have a problem reading the labels.

I will have more to say in my next post.