what makes radios drift from the proper tuning?

That sounds good.

Thanks everyone.

Good point. But the 3 I have do. I'm not buying another unless I was sure it would get 88.5 and I've tried testing it in the store. Might work there but not when I get home.

Very interesting.

Very interesting.

I may give it a party when it turns 100.

Ralph Mowery wrote: "as it warms up it should drift to the station"

From which 'side' of the station as selected on the dial?

If you can find an older Sony Boom Box like the CFD-5 that tune locks, it won't drift at all. I have one on a timer and the station is always still locked after I come home from a trip.

I also find that "power amnesia" to be an annoyance. For most of the settings, modern devices use permanent memory. Often, they exclude the "power' switch.

BTW, For TVs, I notice that many smaller ones will remember, and can be used with a timer. Bigger TVs are power amnesiacs.

On 2/19/19 8:02 PM, Rod Speed wrote: [snip]

If it doesn't come on after a power interruption, that sounds like a defect (unless this was an OPTION you set). I wish they'd put that information on the box and in ads.

BTW, another piece of useful (but often missing) information is latency of an internet connection. This is often more important than speed.

I have found this to be true with larger TVs, but not with smaller ones (the largest I have without the problem is 22-inch). However, they don't put this on the box and any salespeople will probably NOT be able to help.

Possibly a very expensive TV might have an option for this.

Having a momentary switch is not the problem, it's that without power it forgets the setting of that electronic switch.

While a timer could be used to turn a modern tv off, it's highly doubtful you can turn it back on with the timer. All tvs I've seen in the past say, ten years have standby modes. If you connect them to AC, they don't just turn on, you still have to press a button. You can't really tape the button down or short it out in most cases either, because it'll most likely do one of two things if you did:

(a) stay off all the time (b) turn on, but go back to stand by a short time later, because you aren't letting go of the button

I seriously doubt it would come out of standby and remain on if you the button remained pressed. You'd need an older tv that had a real power switch that actually did turn it on or off, not one with a standby or sleep mode.

That isn't restricted to a digital radio. It's any device that has a sleep mode or standby power mode. IE: anything that doesn't have a real power switch. The momentary push button switches on modern tv sets aren't controlling high voltage ac mains directly; they're telling another circuit board that's using a small amount of power that it's okay to close a relay to bring the main power board online from the ac mains. And it'll hold the relay closed until you press the little button again, which opens the relay and resumes sleep/suspend/standby mode.

Most of the time, the power switch is controlled by another board entirely that's mostly a small transformer, a few circuits, a relay and access to the hot leg of the ac mains that it passes along via a closed relay to the rest of the set that does the real work. When you push the button to turn the tv off, it opens the relay. When you want it on, it closes the relay. The remote on the tv is doing the same thing. Sometimes, the IR LEDs are on the smaller standby board and other times it's located on their own boards wired to it, or might be sitting on the actual mainboard of the set, but electrically connected only to the standby board; it just has a physical residence on the mainboard.

So, there's nothing for it to memorize, and no way to enforce the memorization if it did, as the standby board is entirely reliant on human interaction for relay open/close.

The only exception are sets that have additional circuitry to trip the standby board into closing the relay with pulse signal; this requires additional circuitry on the standby board as well as mainboard of the set, wiring, additional coding frontend/backend, and, space to store the last known 'setting' to enforce when the standby board has access to ac mains power.

The additional circuitry on the standby board serves to provide a limited amount of power to the mainboard without closing the relay so the mainboard can pull the last known setting and tell the standby board to close the relay, if that was the setting. When it closes the relay, that's when it's connecting ac mains (the hot leg) to the main power supply that actually runs everything else. The standby board has it's own power supply that's always hot if the set is plugged in.

Yes, exactly.

I have a small tv but for various reasons, can't use it.

I'm set up now, though. Thanks all.

So, how about after all the flailing around here, you TELL us what you did/ended up with.

Are you afraid some border-hoppin' thief is going to steal your stuff?

The most effective way to keep the criminals out is to build a wall around your house. Open borders don't work.

d your house. Open borders don't work.

All walls around properties do is give the thieves shelter from outside eye s. All lights do around properties is give thieves light to work with.

All that is necessary to prevent thievery is for *your* house to be a littl e bit tougher than the next house. Much as I do not have to be faster than the bear, just one other person.

Dogs work well. And being home at the target time. Given that most burglari es happen between 10:00 am and 2:00 pm - when most people are at work or at school. And in the better neighborhoods, a panel van will drive up, a coup le of individuals get out in jump suits and carrying clip-boards. One might set up a power-washer or some such.... you get the picture.

In the next township over from us, a truck delivered some cheap furniture, in boxes, and loaded up all the good stuff prior to leaving. Brilliant.

Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA

people with guns protecting her home as well.

No, it does not. And the Orange Toad squats behind a fence, not a wall.

Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA

The SNR here is getting to be like rec.radio.shortwave...