Appreciating Battery-Powered Radio Tuners

A few days ago we bought an inexpensive Philips AZ1021 Sound Machine, which has a CD player and an AM/FM tuner. With full-fledged mini and micro component systems at my living room and home office I initially had second thoughts, but given the attractive price of PhP 1,700 (less discounts; price is equivalent to about US$50) I thought it wouldn’t hurt to have one more. I intended this for use in the bedroom, and for Caren’s and Cate’s preschool classroom (their CD player was giving out already).

What’s great about the AZ1021 and most other portable Philips CD players is that they can run on batteries.

Little did we know we’d be very grateful for buying the tuner/CD player that day. We woke up from our sound sleep Saturday night to howling winds and with the power out. I knew there was a storm coming, but I didn’t know it will be hitting Metro Manila directly.

So I dropped in six “C” cells and tuned in to one of the reliable AM stations (DZMM, 630 KHz) to monitor the happenings around the country. Our other tuners at home were either FM-only, or were AC-only, or both, so the Philips was the only one we could use to tune into radio news (except for the car’s AM/FM tuner, of course).

And it turned out we were hit pretty strong. Typhoon Frank was already aground, with storm signal no. 3 in the Metro, bringing about a lot of casualties and injuries here and elsewhere.

And during those times, you would hear the radio commentators/news anchors urging people to go out and get battery-operated radios. You sure would appreciate small pieces of low-tech in these times of crisis.