...just to get the Subject line back to lowly battery operated radios rather than dinosaurs ...

The components are smaller and run from a lower voltage so no need to boost the voltage.
Same as your computer, way back when you had simple calculators with TTL gates they ran up to 15V. Then CMOS technology runs at 5. Then you compact the down to modern stuff at 3.3v and even lower in cpu cores.

I just was looking at some radios like that. One of my concerns with the hand crank/ solar/ etc radio types is durability. Also, how well do they work?

The Eton I have is solidly-built and works well, if a bit fiddly to tune. I haven't taken it into the field and beat on it though.

Not a lowly battery operated radio, but the Kaito KA600 is a pretty decent radio. Good FM/AM/NOAA reception and it covers a lot of short wave (2.3KHz-23 KHz).

Power options include:
1. Rechargeable battery pack,
2. Standard AA batteries (I use NiMH rechargeable batteries),
3. Solar (power radio and recharge battery pack),
4. Hand crank,
5. USB,
6. 120 Hz AC

Mine doesn't get much use, too many radios

Not affiliated.

I have a Kaito KA200 pocket AM/FM radio. It is about the size of a pack of cards and has a speaker and headset jack. It also runs on a single AAA battery and so does my EDC flashlight (Fenix E01) and my larger three AAA's LED flashlight (Nebo 5581 220 Lumen Redline Tactical Flashlight Strobe S.O.S ). I use lithium batteries in all of them.

I keep the Kaito in my Go Bag. It was comforting to have it when I was stuck in a hotel in Boston during hurricane Sandy.

Here in San Diego the official emergency radio station is on AM. We don't have much severe weather so the alert stations aren't that useful. However, they are now being used for more non-weather emergency alerts so it would be nice if the Kaito also had that feature. Still, for me, the Kaito is a great emergency radio.

I just remembered, a couple of weeks ago, I was walking the mall in Washington DC when I remembered I had the Kaito in my backpack and I pulled it out to listen to the Chargers football game. Handy.

nice. will order one to try. thnx Treeseeker.

Was surfing Kaito's website and started looking at Tecsun radios which they also market. Down the page you'll find the Tecsun PL360 which is the County Comm GP5DSP. If you check the reviews for this radio on EHam reviews for the Tecsun PL360 there are a few very good reviews which give it a 5/5 rating.

I've started using the GP5 a bit more (wear a headset for FM stereo) and found I really like this radio. For traveling the ETM function will quickly scan through all the stations so that when you "tune" the radio it simply jumps from one station to the next rather than checking out the noise between stations. For AM the 2.5" ferrite antenna that plugs into the top of the radio can be turned in any direction to bring in weaker AM stations.

The radio uses the Silicon Labs si4734 digital signal processing chip which is why there is so much functionality in such a small package. More about the chip HERE, but suffice to say that it is the radio -- minus the antennas, control buttons, batteries, speaker...

Eton radios seem to be the mid priced standard for portable crank and /or solar radios...Some come with a usb port for charging your phone

On a tangent note, I just found out that I can run me Eton FR100 (scorpian) off of a usb port. This means 1 charger can run most of my electronics.

www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B003059FAI