Todd,<br><br>If you don't mind, I'll just cut-and-paste an extract from an e-mail I sent to a friend some time ago. It's a little long (gee, that's gonna shock everybody..) but it contains just about everything I know about them..<br><br>______________<br><br>There are lots of tiny portable FM radios going for less than $10<br>apiece on eBay, but I've noticed that most of them seem to have the<br>headphones (uh.. earbuds) permanently attached. I can see why, it<br>probably saves a few cents on an item where that might be a<br>significant part of the profit margin, but these things also use the<br>headphone cord as an antenna, which might be easier if you know what<br>the headphone cord is for sure. They all seem to be made in China.<br><br>Ok, so I bought one of these at the mall, made by "FM Sounds"<br>(no-name), and here's my initial impressions. The thing is the size<br>and weight of a filled matchbox- really light. In fact, there's this<br>little chrome chain on one corner with a chrome clip on it, and<br>together I think the chain and clip account for about a third the<br>weight- I may remove them. Controls are very basic, but adequate-<br>there's a switch for "off", "low" and "high", meaning volume.<br>There's [censored] little difference between "low" and "high", but "low"<br>seems adequate. There's a button to scan up the channels, and one to<br>reset to the bottom of the band. Sound and tuning are amazingly,<br>surprisingly, good. The case feels pretty surprisingly robust, like a<br>pager, but doesn't give the impression of being water resistant at<br>all. It's so light it's hard to imagine it being damaged by dropping<br>it, even on concrete. I have no idea yet how long the little button<br>cell batteries will last, but hopefully driving the tiny earbuds<br>doesn't take much. This looks like it would do just fine for an<br>ultralight urban bugout kit. Cost $7.95<br><br>There's a website on the package, and that gets me to a product page.<br>Amazing that such El Cheapo stuff has it's own web pages, but that's<br>the times.. :<br><br>http://www.atcsd.com/rc_pager_radio.html<br><br>Too bad there's nothing to give scale. Stare, really look, at the<br>headphone connector. It looks outsized. It isn't.<br><br>Looking back at the index page,<br><br>http://www.atcsd.com/retail_consumer.html<br><br>there are some others that are interesting, but the objection about<br>permanently attached earbuds remains. Maybe I'm being silly about<br>that. This one:<br><br>http://www.atcsd.com/rc_worlds_smallest.html<br><br>shows up on eBay a lot.<br><br><br>