Mark, home power from a wall socket is 120 volts AC (60 Hz alternating current), your car is 12 volts DC (direct current). Typical AA, AAA, C or D batteries are 1.5 volts DC.

haha oops, got it backwards, good thing i am NOT an electrician eh

SAME stands for Specific Area Message Encoding. Basically, it's a system that allows you enter the code for your county (or any county, actually) and your weather radio will only "turn on" and announce warnings that pertain to that county (or counties, since many radios allow multiple counties to be programmed). If you've ever been driving in a car with a fast moving thunderstorm sweeping through a region, you'll hear warning after warning on the car radio as the storm moves through the region. You have no control over which warnings you hear on the car radio, even if the storm is quite far from you. SAME encoding allows you to only hear the warnings for geographic locations you want.

SAME encodings and NOAA frquencies are totally different things, however, your SAME settings will apply to any NOAA frequency you are listening to. Every National Weather Service broadcast warning will include a burst of digital info that may sound like static and I believe that burst is what tells your radio which counties a particular warning applies to, and if it matches your SAME settings, your radio will blare out the appropriate message, otherwise it will stay quiet.

I reviewed the radio here: http://forums.equipped.org/ubbthreads.ph...true#Post264506 .

The Eton radio I have has been a champ, I'm very comfortable recommending the brand. Mine will run for at least thirty minutes on one minute of cranking. I still prefer batteries.

There is just no comparison between the weather information on commercial radio and that available on NOAA weather bands. The dedicated weather channels win hands down. Occasionally TV weather broadcasts will get my attention - better visuals...

To be fair, I just looked at the NOAA broadcast freqs in my area and there are two frequencies, one for the standard NOAA weather broadcast and one for the NOAA marine broadcast -- they are on adjacent channels so I may have tuned into the marine broadcast. While the coverage maps are similar, they aren't the same; the marine has less coverage over land.

Sooo, I'll pull out my weather radio (which just so happens to also have a brand new never used hand crank for charging its internal NiMH battery ) and see how well it works if I tune in the correct station. Then we'll see if I'm eating crow for dinner.

Edit: Sometimes crow tastes good. That said, this is a different radio. It's a Kaito Voyager Pro KA600 and the weather band is channelized -- CH-1 thru CH-7 so there's no guessing. Channel 1 comes through quite well; Channel 2 (marine) is weaker but strong enough. The audio quality sucks but that's prolly a function of a narrow bandwidth and synthetic audio. Still, very good for what is intended.

BTW, the Kaito Voyager has it's own solar panel in addition to the handcrank. It also has an input for 6VDC and both USB In and Out. If you have 120VAC power and the 6VDC adaptor you can charge a cell phone or other USB device as well as the onboard NiMH battery pack. Lots of power options.

Several you may want to look at. I've had all mentioned below for several years.

I'm a weather spotter and have several NOAA weather radios.

I have a Kaito Voyager Pro AM/FM/SW/NOAA(WX) and it has held up well and even survived several downpours, though it is not marketed as even weather-resistant. Has solar charger and hand crank.

I have a Midland Base Campe XT 511 -- AM/FM/NOAA(WX) with FRS-GMRS transmit/receive capability. Has hand crank. GMRS requires a license from FCC.

I have an Oregon Scientific WR110. About 4"x2.5" WX only and battery only. Batteries last several months while unit is on stand-by.

I have a Midland HH50. About 3.5"x1.75" -- Would not recommend this. Something is wrong with this unit as it drains batteries in a few weeks, even when kept in the "off" position.

Plus, as an amateur radio operator, I have two Yaesus --
the VX-7R and VX-8R which both have dual receive and WX bands.