If you have trouble keeping abreast of home or world
affairs while abroad and your language skills are
below par, the obvious solution is to buy an English
newspaper when the opportunity arises.
This has its drawbacks of course.
Firstly the newspaper is already out of date when
it is issued at home and secondly the copy you buy
in Malta, Malaga or Marseille will be another day
older by the time it reaches you.
Over the years I've tried various car radios but
had little success in managing to receive an English-speaking
radio station. It was two or three holidays ago
that I started taking a Sony Walkman in an attempt
to keep in touch with what was happening at home.
I did have a certain amount of luck with it though,
catching the odd scrambled sentence here and there.
It uses the earpiece cord as an antenna requiring
the listener to achieve some odd positions to get
the weakest of signals much to the amusement of
the neighbouring holidaymakers.
The one year I caught snippets of news regarding
terrorists attacks in America. Another year we couldn't
get news about the fuel strikes back home.
I promised myself reliable news on future holidays
following these two occasions.
This brings me to the subject of this review, the
Roberts Radio Model R9921.
A truly wonderful MW/FM/SW receiver with 7 SW bands
and 27 presets. The RDS feature is particularly useful
when using the FM band, not just for the station information
but also for the facility of automatically setting
the digital clock to local time.
As the BBC World Service is transmitted on several
frequencies at different times, it is very useful
to have the frequencies stored as presets. The sleep
timer and wake up alarm means you can leave your old
alarm clock at home.
Nostalgi, our favourite when in
the south of France
If you happen to take this unit to America you can
also change the tuning steps to 10kHz (9kHz in Europe).
The tone adjustable sound is delivered through the
single speaker although stereo (from FM stereo broadcasts)
can be heard through the supplied earphones.
The radio runs from 4 AA batteries or a mains adaptor
(available seperately), a lock button prevents the
radio from being accidentally switched on.
There is a nice slip case included that, while not
giving shock protection, does prevent the unit from
getting scratched.
This radio performed perfectly during our 2002 trip
to France and will certainly be travelling with us
for many years to come.
