it's radio time again was something i knew i had to have when i saw it on ebay because
it has such an ominous chinese cold war era appearance it's the hong deng hd 753 f radio
better known as the red lantern which is at odds with the name of the ebay seller it comes from
happy home 2019 but it's not that cheap it costs 39.59 with free shipping from china
and it comes in this ornately decorated box
all the writing is in chinese except for the name and model number it doesn't really say anything
else about the radio on the box and inside the box you get the radio itself you get a power
supply and a small owner's manual which is also no use to me because it's entirely in chinese
as is all the writing on the radio itself except for red lantern for all i know this
could be saying buying this radio officially makes you a member of the ccp so it's just
a basic am fm radio no shortwave there's the built-in speaker with the very 1960s era styling
on the back it has this fancy textured molding and there's the band switch on the back there's a
earphone output and a three volt dc power input more writing in chinese and there's the battery
compartment it can run on either a single 18650 lithium cell or two d cell batteries which i'll
use because i don't have any 18650s on hand but those d batteries should last a good long time
you could run it on the provided power adapter although i think it would tend to cause radio
interference on am because this is one of those cheap and not very well shielded switching mode
power supplies on the back is also a telescoping antenna for fm the am antenna is built in
and for a size comparison there it is next to the indian made
5 core radio which i did several videos about so here we go with
the red lantern i almost expect to hear a speech from chairman mao when i turn it on
but instead we got dionne warwick
that's a fairly weak station so it has pretty good reception although
by that choppiness when i tune it it's obvious that this uses a digital signal processor
the sound quality is not that great from the built-in speaker but it's not terrible either
"you're rolling along and everything's great but when you struggle just a little bit
you can fall..." that's the sports talk station on 98.7 fm and the dial calibration is a little bit
shifted up because you can see it's almost showing a hundred megahertz on the dial
a little bit hissy and choppy but that's actually a station from maryland and i'm here in new jersey
probably about 150 miles away so we must be getting some tropospheric ducting tonight
on fm which is long distance reception within several hundred miles usually
occurring during warm summer evenings and it is definitely one of those today
"the best mix of classical music get your daily playlist when you become a member at wqxr.org
here's edward elgar's wand of youth suite number one
brighton thompson conducting the ulster orchestra"
now here is am or what it calls medium wave
it's rather muffled sounding
it wouldn't be am without the preachers... oh and that station just went off the air
because it's 8:30 and they're only licensed to operate during the daytime they're supposed
to give an announcement before they sign off but they just shut off the transmitter
i can't pick up any stations in chinese but that was a soap opera in korean
i just connected the power supply and i'm glad i checked this with my
multimeter because it's not only putting out 5 volts on the terminals of the 18650 cell
it's also putting out 5 volts on the terminals of the d cell batteries so if you're going to
connect the power supply you better not leave non-rechargeable d cell batteries in this thing
and just as i suspected that switching
power supply causes too much interference to be usable on am
it even causes interference on fm
in the first video i did about the indian made 5core radio i got so many people asking me to take
it apart i had to do a follow-up video showing the inside so i won't make that mistake again
but unfortunately there's no big surprises in here just a
very bare looking circuit board because the integrated circuits are on the other side
there's the am loopstick coil antenna
just as i suspected it uses a variable resistor to do the tuning instead of a variable capacitor
there's the volume control a couple other capacitors and a crystal on the back there
it has a three inch 8 ohm 3 watt speaker of a fairly large magnet on it
i don't want to take out this circuit board because then i would probably have to restring
the dial cord but it's just going to have one dsp chip that does all the radio functions and
one audio amplifier chip and that's about it these days for these digital based radio tuners
and i will say the build quality is quite a bit higher than that indian made five core radio
the plastic molding is much higher quality and all the wires have plugs on them
even on this little circuit board here
as you might expect the headphone output is only mono on fm but it actually sounds pretty good
"we've only touched on some of the intriguing music to be found on the earth's most massive
continent asia though it's comprised of thousands of different cultures asia as a whole is a growing
powerhouse of economic influence and asian music too is expanding its influence around the world"
so that's it for the hong deng hd 753f red lantern radio there's no real reason to buy one of these
i mean it's just a cheap plastic am fm radio doesn't sound that great reception is okay
but not that great i was just attracted to its very ominous 1960s cold war red scare appearance
this has to be the most chinese looking chinese-made product i've ever seen because
instead of trying to hide where it came from it proudly proclaims it right on the front panel here
even the markings for the volume and tuning dials are in chinese they really went all out with this
look including that logo on the speaker and of course the red lantern logo on the dial