Degen again…

Oops… I dropped my Degen the other day, out of my jacket pocket and onto the tarmac. Btteries came loose but otherwise fine… I thought.

I was just outside the house, and when I got in I realised the audio was muted even when cans weren't plugged in.

So I took a deep breath and opened it up, eventually smoothing out the lower contact on the
headphone jack, to allow the audio to the speaker when there wasn't a plug in there.

Put it back together, it was working again. Except for some distortion when the volume was a little bit loud – not too loud mind! It sounded like something loose on the speaker. I opened it up again but couldn't access the front of the speaker, without removing it. I don't have the gear or confidence to do that.

After a while the distortion got too bad, so I thumped the radio on my knee. Well it works with some machines.

This time, it didn't.

But it did make the aluminium face plate start to peel off.

Straight in there, I peeled it back enough to see the speaker, under its little gauze veil. I gently touched the centre paper with a small screwdriver, and the distortion went away.

Cool!

Super-glued it back down. Looks kinda bumpy. Let's call it character.

Degen D1105 in NZ

My Degen 1105 finally arrived by post from Ireland on Saturday. Hurray!

It works a treat here. FM reception of Radio National in central Auckland is absolutely fine – no more of that hiss that came with the Pure PocketDAB 2000 (which, incidentally, has failed the exact same way the first one did, but after an even shorter time).

My 1105 has lost it's telescopic antenna, but still gets all the local FMs fine. On the move is also fine, as it uses the headphone wire as antenna when it's there.

Shortwave hasn't done much for me so far – a bit of Radio Australia, some China, and a couple of unidentified, maybe Russian language.

Mediumwave… it's like I expected, and my it's odd. Nothing, certainly during the day, from any other country.

All in all, rather happy to have it here.

Degen DE 1105 review update – it's broken!

My Degen 1105 is more or less out of service. Why? Because the aerial fell out! The telescopic antenna is fitted into the body of the radio, so there’s no joint for it to turn around outside the set.
Two segments of the aerial have fallen out. So it’s fairly useless – you can put the segments back in, but they just fall out again, and the connection is unreliable, needless to say.

This reminded me to root out the DE 1102. All AM is dodgy on that, MF and HF. I think the ferrite rod came lose first, and then I poked around at it zapping the shortwave coverage.
I'm a bit disappointed at the build quality of the Degens now -- they feel very solid, but mine have both failed inside, mechanically.