The CCRadio: The Radio That Wasn't by Kevin Redding,
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We all have heard the hype on the Art Bell show "Coast to Coast" and the
Rush Limbaugh
program about the "Best AM radio ever", the CCRadio. If you go to
www.ccrane.com,
heres what they say. "Never before has a radio been specifically designed
for talk
radio, news, sports and weather. Twenty years of dreaming, planning and
engineering
went into the development of this radio. Audio has been specifically
tailored for
the human voice."
The claims of "The Most Powerful AM / FM Radio Ever Made" and "Hear Radio
How It
Was Meant To Be" are now gone from the site where they were once prominently
shown.
This is a very good radio for a casual listener and not a serious DXer.
Anyone who
expects otherwise is going to be sadly mistaken. I would classify this radio
as one
that is a fair to good radio that can do some nice domestic DXing. If you
purchase
it with that in mind, then you will not be disappointed.
Let me describe the radio to you. The CCRadio is smaller than the GE
Superadio III.
It is 11"W x 6.5"H x 4"D. There is a very large LCD display with large
numerics shown
on the screen. It is even easy for my 45 year old eyes to make out with
bifocals.
The radio weighs about 4 lbs. without batteries.
There are treble and bass controls, an up or down tuning button which moves
the frequency
10 kHz on AM, light switch, band selector, clock / frequency display and a
sleep
timer button on the front. On the side there is a very large dial which
tunes in
1 kHz steps, a lock switch, volume pot and jack that will accomodate stereo
headphones
although there is no AM, FM or TV stereo on this unit.
On the top of the set there is an alarm button and a button that sets the
weather
alert for when the alert tone is set by the NWS in case of an emergency.
Across the
set are five large round buttons marked one through five. Each band has 5
memory
settings. On the end of the top above the LCD there is the power switch. And
near
the alarm button there is the FM / TV / WX telescoping antenna which seems
to be
rather short at about 20 inches.
The radio is carried by a handgrab recess in the back and this is rather
unfortunate.
This radio desperately needed to have a handle. When you pick the radio up
via the
hand access your thumb or heel of your hand rests on the control buttons on
the top
and changes frequencies, sets alarms, turns off the radio or turns off the
weather
emergency alert.
The CCRadio I purchased was the model with the DC charging circuit and the
LED light.
These jacks are found on the back along with external AM antenna
connections. The
AM antenna connections are virtually useless and I would not attempt to
attach any
antenna to it as there is very little to be gained by doing this as the
ferrite antenna
in the unit can not be disabled.
The LED light which is an option, is very bright and the light exceptionally
white.
The light has no consideration for turning it on and off while connected to
the radio.
Either the light is plugged in and running or unplugged and off. I find that
for
a light that is $39, this is an extremely glaring omission.
The DC charging circuit which also is optional, can either be used with a 6v
wall
wart or a solar panel. I do not have the solar panel but it is said to be
able to
charge the four optional NiCd batteries in 67 hours using the solar panel.
The optional
6v wall wart will charge the NiCds in 27 hours. The expected run time on the
NiCds
is 48 hours. The radio seems to like batteries a great deal.
This radio tries very hard to be a lot of things to a lot of people. The
frequency
coverage is from 520 - 1710 on AM, 87.5 - 108.0 on FM, TV channel 2 -13 and
all seven
channels on the weather band. The set has an alarm, a sleep timer and a
snooze feature.
When it comes to AM reception, if you live in the city and are surrounded
with many
signals, this may not be the radio for you. I have observed that this radio
is very
sensitive but not very highly selective. I live approximately 3 miles from
KMIK 1580's
antenna. On my Radio Shack DX-398 [ Sangean 909 ] I have KMIK and its splash
from
1570 to 1590. On the CCRadio KMIK kills the band from 1540 to 1620 and also
has its
images popping up in places on the X-band during the day. I have a similar
problem
with KXAM 1310 also about 3 miles away running 5 kW where the spread is
larger on
the CCRadio than the DX-398.