Hi Harrkev,

I enjoy your posts but I think you might want to be a bit more careful before telling someone "you are wrong." <img src="/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" /> I know a little about battery chemistry and I'm afraid you seem to be somewhat misinformed on a couple of issues.

First, none of the the wideband radios you reference is likely to get much, if any, shortwave reception. Rubber ducky antennas are simply the wrong lengh for HF and they are generally tuned between 140 to 800 MHz rather than shortwave frequencies. (They also tend to have negative gain.) A dedicated shortwave radio (or a just a long wire) might be an alternative, but shortwave quality in the US has certainly gone downhill in recent years. (How I miss Alistair Cooke on the BBC.) And it's just a wild guess, but I don't think most Americans would find Deutsche Welle's English language service particuarly entertaining.

As for batteries, I strongly (but cordially) disagree with you. NiMH battteries need to be carefully stored and conditioned (i.e., fully charged, discharged, and recharged, etc.) and you're not going to get that with a crank that charges them up to 10% of their capacity. They require this conditioning both when they are new and when they are taken out of storage. My guess is that the built-in NiMH's in your Eton are not in the best of shape. Even worse are the radios (like the Freeplay) that have solar chargers that constantly trickle charge the batteries. That is among the fastest way to kill most rechargable batteries, although a notable exception are sealed lead acid batteries which manage it quite well. (That's why hams love them for emergency use.)

Finally, you seem to have lost track of what I was referring to -- lithium-ion batteries are rechargeables --not disposables -- and they are not at all what I'm talking about. There are many, many types of lithium based batteries and lithium iron disulfides are the typical AA sized disposables you'd buy at a store. They have an extremely low self-discharge rate and the latest estimates for the most recent chemistries have raised their shelf-life to an astonishing 15 years. As far as I know, nothing else commercially avaiable comes close to this. They are also very light weight, which makes them great for EDC, and they work in extreme temperature ranges, particularly in the cold, which leaves alkalines in the dust.

Anyway, I don't mean to bust your chops, but I think most people have limited budgets for survival equipment and it's easy to get carried away with exotic solutions to simple problems. However, in this case, there are very low cost solutions to this problem, and I think they're worth advocating. As for listening to hams as a source of information, I remain somwhat dubious, but perhaps you have a point. Nonetheless, I'm not sure the benefit is worth the cost or the trouble of doing so for someone who isn't active on the ham bands on a regular basis.

Best,
Fitz