A shortwave blog

Over in the cobalt pet blog, weatherall has noticed my Eton posting. It looks like an interesting shortwave listener blog; I think I'll check it out some more.

Eton followup

I just called Eton. The man on the phone said that he was going to let his supervisor know that this was outside the recall range, but there wouldn't be any problem setting up the repair.

They'll be sending me a box to ship the radio to R.L. Drake, and Drake will repair it and send it back within 2 weeks. Except for not having the radio for that time, it all seems reasonably convenient. I'm going to enclose a note to have them check the frequency calibration, since it seems to be about 70Hz off, so maybe I'll get a hand-calibrated radio out of this too.

Eton E1XM defective

I've enjoyed listening to shortwave radio broadcasts for about 15 years. Most of that time I've had a Sony 7600G, which is a nice radio, but the power button is starting to fail, so I thought I'd get a new radio.

So this week I bought a new Eton E1XM shortwave radio. Unfortunately, it is defective. There is a recall for some units, as described here.

Mine has SN 2428, which is outside the recall range, but I was a little worried because I read a few reports that units not covered by the recall were also defective. So this evening I put in 4 new batteries and ran it plugged in for about an hour. I never noticed that the batteries got warm, but then I heard some popping noise. I dumped out the batteries and set them on the counter, and they continued leaking and popping.

So tomorrow I'll be calling Eton about the recall. Hopefully I won't have a problem getting it fixed. It looks like Eton needs to recall a few more radios.

Hopefully Google will pick up this post so other people who buy an E1XM might do a search and will know to be careful the first time they use batteries with the AC plugged in.

Other than this problem, the radio is tremendous. I'm looking forward to getting one that works correctly.