Review on Eton Executive Aircraft Shortwave Leather by David Sokolov

A few first impressions after two days of ownership: My very first impressions were that apart from the metal speaker grille and leather case, this radio looks a bit plasticky (but still very acceptable given its price and Reliable). I had a lot of fun going through the manual to find out what all the buttons do. The display is well thought out and can be read with or without a backlight. The device as a whole never turns off. When it's "off," it continues to function like a clock, even showing battery levels and responding to button presses. It has a lock function to prevent accidental button presses. The station memory is divided into seven easy-to-manage station fragments called "pages". Pages can be named with alphanumeric characters. FM reception is excellent and it can automatically find and speed dial all local stations. It receives RDS data for the FM stations that broadcast it, which is very good. AM reception is excellent and I am happy to be able to pick up DX stations in the evenings with great success. Even during the day the reception works very well for stations that are usually difficult to hear on other radios. I struggled with the functionality. It gets in the way because it doesn't work well as a stand and doesn't have speaker holes. The headphones solve the speaker hole issue (which works really well), but it would be nice if the case had a better stand feature. The movement of the antenna is very smooth and has two pivot points. The hinges allow it to extend vertically from the top or left side of the radio when laid on its back. I have used the auxiliary input feature of this radio on some QRP ham radios that only have headphone jacks. and this is a great and useful feature (ARS AA7JC). The shortwave bands work as expected for a radio in this price range and the SSB modes work great. LSB and USB are selectable and quite easy to use. I like the bandwidth filter feature, available in all AM and SSB modes (works really well). Battery life was good, with the indicator still showing the full battery level after two days of play. I was pleasantly surprised that the wall wart that came with my radio appears to be the classic analog type (with a real transformer), which is rare these days. In the world of wall warts, this is a mark of quality. Analog power supplies are better for radios because they don't generate digital noise when tuned to the shortwave bands. One of the really cool features of this radio is the great display. It has been carefully designed to display as much information as possible without draining your battery. Some memory management software available via Bluetooth would be a great design addition to this radio (if Eaton is listening) but overall this radio makes a great deal. at the current price. Yes I would buy it again. Edited addition: The radio works really well. especially outdoors away from electrical interference in the house. One BIG thing I ran into was a dyslexia error in the user manual. Eton has exchanged copy/paste instructions for a single memory location for instructions for copy/paste an entire memory page. the ability to telescope the radio with a double turn from the side 3 - the ability to see the display even with the backlight completely turned off (in good lighting conditions).