[Jeffhs]

My five Zenith radios don't see a lot of use, as there isn't that much to listen to on AM or FM radio in my area. Plenty of stations (the AM is full of stations at night; I like listening to an all-news station in Philadelphia [KYW 1060] for national news), but the FMs are mostly rock, country and one talk station (the last is one I don't get where I live now, though I did hear it very well at my former home); I listened quite a bit to NPR when the war in Iraq first started and was beginning to heat up, but lately I don't have much to do with anything below 92 MHz. I mostly listen to my own cassettes and CDs, in addition to two Internet radio stations (Radio365 and RealOldies 1690, the latter being the Internet webcast of an oldies station in suburban Chicago) and several digital cable music channels. I'd use my Zenith TransOceanic Royal 1000-1 more than I do if it were not for the facts that 1) I only have two places in my apartment I can plug the wall-wart adapter into (an outlet in my kitchen and one behind the desk with my amateur radio gear). The former isn't really the best place in the world to be using anything powered by electricity even though the outlets are protected by GFCIs; the latter is in my bedroom, and since I can't have my radios on very loud here it is very difficult to hear it anyplace else in the apartment when on, 2) I haven't gotten around to getting new batteries for it yet. When I do use that radio or my smaller Zenith R-70, or even my Zenith K-731 or my 1951 H-511Y, I listen to a big-band/standards station from Toronto. I also have a Zenith H-480W AM/FM stereo clock radio which I bought new in 1980; it works on AM but is very weak on FM ever since I cleaned the slide controls (volume, tone, balance) with contact cleaner (RadioShack brand, not Deoxit--I don't really know where to find the latter; I live in a small town with nothing in the way of electronics stores except a Radio Shack in the next town, five miles from here--there are no large cities, only small towns for the most part, in my area). Some of the spray must have gotten into the FM RF amp or some early signal stage and shorted a transistor or worse, as the FM is extremely weak (can barely hear it with the volume full on, though the stations are there).