The FreePlay Plus Radio
by Charles S. Fitch, P.E.
The extraordinary FreePlay radio has been with us
for quite some time and the original version was reviewed by Radio
World's Al Peterson shortly after it was introduced.
The brainchild of inventor, Sir Trevor Baylis,
the idea came to him while watching a documentary on the ever-expanding
HIV plague in Africa. Rightly so, he felt that AIDS was a unique
epidemic in that we actually knew how it spread. Getting this
infection transmission information out and reinforcing its application
for prevention to the indigenous population could be best done
by radio. With this in mind he realized that a "KISS"
type radio using a windup generator could and would work anywhere
that people could turn the crank.
The essence of cost effectiveness, the original
FreePlay had only a windup generator as a power source and a no
frills receiver as its target purchaser was a citizen of an emerging
nation with very limited funds.
Since that time, many new models have been introduced
satisfying different needs as well as a more upscale clientele
such as the trekker, outdoorsman, survivalist, etc. The newest
model added to the line, FreePlay Plus (FP+), has some most useful
added enhancements.
Most notable is the inclusion of a solar cell as
one of three power input sources. The FP+ also has nicad batteries
to reservoir the input power regardless of source. These can be
charged either by the solar cells, the windup generator or an
external supply such as a plugin wall wart or through a car charger.
An LED "flashlight" powered by the FP+
rounds out the most notable improvements. The flashlight has a
six-foot cord with a magnet on the back to provide mounting flexibility.
The light is held by that magnet in a little side nest next to
its separate on/off switch. The layout of the cabinet is such
that one can single-handedly hold the radio's handle, turn on
the light and aim it like a regular flashlight. The light head
plugs into a DC outlet inside the nest, which makes for easy connection
of "extension cords" in case you would want to extend
the light or to use as a convenient 6-volt power tap for other
gear. The 6-ft cord for the light is niftily wound inside the
light head in a scheme quite reminiscent of winding up one of
those little travelers' short wave antenna.
The radio receives AM, FM and the most popular
section of the SW band, 3 to 18 MHz. Although the headset jack
is conveniently wired as a mini stereo to allow the use of stereo
headsets, the audio is mono.
The FreePlay radios are made in South Africa and,
at last report, GE owns a portion of the firm who makes them.
Ours (SN CCO36358) was purchased on the web from C. Crane and
we were lucky enough to discover a sale in progress so we paid
only $99.99 (shipping included!).
The manufacturer claims a little over 5 pounds
in weight of which most of that number is the very sturdy crank
spring generator and the nicads. My unit had an integral fixed
carrying handle (needed to stabilize the radio when you crank
the windup generator) and was finished in flat, space age, black
plastic. The guarantee is for one year and repair is free if it's
their fault. Abuse or neglect, as usual, is not covered.
About a year ago, we ran a four part series on
lighting and specifically lighting for your radio station as part
of our usual NEC column in RW (see the website for back articles).
While discussing lighting sources in that series, we made mention
of the fact that the LED would eventually (if not soon) make its
way into the general lighting arena as a more power efficient
substitute for task level incandescent.
Well here in the FP+ we see one of the first applications
of LEDs used in this manner. Although the instruction book clearly
states that the output of the three long life, very rugged LEDs
in the "spotlight" is only the equivalent of 1 (that's
ONE) candlepower, it will help you locate big objects and keep
you from injuring yourself caused by bumping into these big objects.
(Are any of you old enough to remember the Christian
Brothers inspirational radio shows that began "if you light
one candle in the great void of darkness, it will shine like a
beacon"? Anyway the concept is similar here that even a little
light of knowledge is better than the total darkness of ignorance.)
The radio is the heart of the unit however and
in keeping with the FreePlay "KISS" philosophy, tuning
is by knob with a mechanically driven pointer on a horizontal
analog dial. The wide range of the two short wave bands means
that the main knob station tuning is hypercritical. The FP+ gets
around this by having a SW only fine tuning, "bandspread"
knob that seems to be about 50 KHz wide.
The dial is not lighted or fluorescent. You turn
on the light, pull out the head and shine it on the dial if you
need operate in the dark.
The AM section has an internal ferrite bar antenna
(rotate receiver for strongest signal) and a whip antenna for
FM and short-wave (rotate antenna for strongest signal). External
antennas for FM and SW are just clipped onto the end of the whip.
Sensitivity is good to excellent on all bands but
selectivity and rejection leaves much to be desired with the TV
stations and the 50 kw class B FMs on nearby Avon Mountain (about
3 miles) popping up in multiple places as did co-located WTIC-AM
somewhat on the AM dial.
By clipping our test HP generator's output signal
directly onto the whip, we were able to measure approximate sensitivity
which midband on SW 1 (5.22 MHz) was 56.2 uv(-72 dbm) and similarly
on SW 2 (11.94 MHz) was 22.4 uv(-80 dbm) for full quieting.
On FM at 99.3 MHz full quieting was achieved in mono at 70.8 uv
(-70 dbm).
Since no external antenna input is available for
the AM section, the best testing alternative that I could devise
was to tune in a distant station and then compare this to the
FI level for that station on an FIM. Here in Avon, CT, my buddy,
Cris Alexander's, Rochester station on 990 KHz, WLGZ, was armchair
copy with an FIM reading QSBing between 0.4 and 1 mv/m as was
WTOP.
Sound quality from the 4-inch speaker and on my
Koss headset seems remarkably good especially on SW where, for
instance, DW during the day around 15 MHz sounded like a local
with a warm, pleasing and highly intelligible tone and response.
The solar cells do a great job of charging the
nicads, which played at least 4 hours through a pleasant evening
for me listening to Radio Bulgaria, Radio Rumania et al. The cells
are permanently mounted on top at a slight angle highly conducive
for window charging. You best crank it all 60 winds however if
you want to relax for any length of time when the batteries are
dead.
When you think about it, the best ideas are the
simple ones and the windup generator in these FreePlays are an
exceptionally beautiful and near perfect example of that concept.
Trevor Bayles deserved to be knighted just for that. The one in
this unit required about 30 seconds of just modest and even torque
to wind up tight and the generator ran back smooth and noiseless.
You can listen and charge at the same time as well
when on the 6-volt DC plug-in power supply but make sure whatever supply
you select is well filtered or you'll hear the hum in the background.
Suggestions for the inevitable new and improved
version of the FreePlay (the FreePlay Plus Plus possibly), add
an external antenna input for at least SW and improve the overload
capability. As one of those feature-conscious engineer, I would
love to make the light cord do double duty as a long wire SW antenna
as well since it has that neat wind up feature. Most Chinese manufactured
SW radios use an audio chip that provides FM stereo to the headset
and I think this would be a small cost improvement in the FP++
as well.
Conclusion … by and large, a most useful and
fun radio for outdoors, isolated locations, and emergency use
or as a discussion/conversation item. For pending emergencies
one can keep it fully charged and ready to go by just leaving
it where the sun shines on the photocells a few hours a day.
I really like the FP+ but then again, I really
like radio.
Our author normally writes the RW NEC column.
Two sidebar stories follow:
Cristina in Ghana
My daughter Christina is a recent Notre Dame graduate
(2000 pre-med) and now in the medical school at Yale about half
way through her masters in Public Health. All master's candidates
are required to do a major health research project over the summer
between the two years.
One of Christina's role models is Dr. Albert Switzer,
the great medical missionary of the earlier part of the 1900's
who did most of his magnificent humanitarian work along the Congo
in Africa. So when the opportunity came for Christina to go to
Ghana with two other Yale med school members to research the modern
role of traditional birth attendants (TBAs), the African version
of a midwife, she jumped on this reason to journey to the "Dark
Continent."
Expecting to find far less of an infrastructure
than what we are accustomed to here in the states, she took along
our Grundig Yachtboy 400 to listen to the BBC and the VOA so as
to stay abreast of the world situation. Her surmise was completely
correct as even some locations that she visited which had power
infrastructure were without power for days at a time. Glad she
took several sets of batteries as the SW was their "window
to the world."
Notre Dame graduates are unique in sense of kinship
such that they not only seek each other out wherever they are
but will also travel hundreds of miles to do so. In this case,
fellow graduate and friend, Cris Kusak, came all the way to the
coastal part of Ghana from the far outback hill country.
Cris took a hiatus before entering graduate school
to accept an assignment for two years with the Peace Corps to
help with an economics project in the great outback of Ghana.
Cris tells us that although they have the poles, the wires, etc.
for the supply of power in his outback village, they haven't had
power for months!
Christina and I discussed this upon her return
home and we decided that Cris was a fellow who really needed a
FP+ radio.
Since the radio would have to travel halfway around
the world, it seemed the best idea to test it thoroughly here
in Connecticut before shipment. This review is an out shot of
that testing.
Cris knows the FP+ we bought for him is coming
and he has promised to send all of us a picture of it in use as
well as to give us a real field report. Though Cris will be coming
home in summer 2002, the radio will stay in Ghana as he intends
to give it to a nearby TBA clinic. What a guy …
When You Can't Play Charades or Do Mime on the Radio
Since we mention QSBing above and if you're not
familiar with "Q" signals, here's some background and
an explanation.
One tremendous luxury we Americans have is that
most of the world speaks English as the basic language of commerce.
International phone operators (when we had them) always spoke
English when arranging calls and more so even now, all aircraft
dispatch is in English. However things weren't always this way.
The first real, commercial use of radio was communications
at sea and since we've all seen Titanic (maybe three or four times)*,
imagine how much more of a disaster that would have been without
the life saving intervention of radio.
Since radio went on all ships of many countries,
language would have been a real problem. To overcome this, at
one of the first international conventions to explore radio usage,
it was decided that a universal message "code" was needed.
This would allow operators to exchange complex ideas without a
common language and in a uniform format to avoid confusion.
French was the ubiquitous language at the time
and many contractions and phonetics of French were used such as
MAYDAY which is a phonetic bastardization of "m'aidez"
hich is the plural form of m'aide and
it means "help us" .
Early radio equipment was primitive to say the
least, not very selective and prone to interference. Even with
the simplicity of Morse transmission, it was still tough to get
message traffic through. For that reason, not only was it desirable
to have codation from a language point of view but also this brevity
would cut message time to a minimum and reduce station on air
time hence interference.
Out of all these demands eventually came the "Q"
signal code.
For example, "QRM" sent with a question
mark or an interrogative "fist" (the individual style
and signature of a Morse operator) meant "Is my signal being
interfered with?" "QRM" sent straight or in a declarative
fist meant "My station is being interfered with."
Similarly, "QTH" as a question meant
" What is your location?" and as a declarative meant
"My location is." With this type of "Q" signal,
the data needed would follow in a predetermined pattern such as
latitude and longitude in a degree, minute, second format.
A list of the most often used "Q" signals
follows and quite often you can still hear them used today on
the hambands and occasionally from the old salts on the maritime
channels.
The grandchildren of these signals are the acronyms
you find on the Internet, IMHO.
A Partial List of International Q Signals
A Q signal followed by a question mark asks a question.
A Q signal without the question mark answers the question affirmatively,
unless otherwise indicated.
QRA--What is the name of your station?
QRG--What's my exact frequency?
QRH--Does my frequency vary?
QRI--How is my tone? (1-3)
QRK--What is my signal intelligibility? (1-5)
QRL--Are you busy?
QRM--Is my transmission being interfered with?
QRN--Are you troubled by static?
QRO--Shall I increase transmitter power?
QRP--Shall I decrease transmitter power?
QRQ--Shall I send faster?
QRS--Shall I send slower?
QRT--Shall I stop sending?
QRU--Have you anything for me? (Answer in negative)
QRV--Are you ready?
QRW--Shall I tell ______ you're calling him?
QRX--When will you call again?
QRZ--Who is calling me?
QSA--What is my signal strength? (1-5)
QSB--Are my signals fading?
QSD--Is my keying defective?
QSG--Shall I send ______ messages at a time?
QSK--Can you work breakin?
QSL--Can you acknowledge receipt?
QSM--Shall I repeat the last message sent?
QSO--Can you communicate with ______ direct?
QSP--Will you relay to ______?
QSV--Shall I send a series of V's?
QSW--Will you transmit on ______?
QSX--Will you listen for ______ on ______?
QSY--Shall I change frequency?
QSZ--Shall I send each word/group more than once?
(Answer, send twice or ______)
QTA--Shall I cancel number ______?
QTB--Do you agree with my word count? (Answer negative)
QTC--How many messages have you to send?
QTH--What is your location?
QTR--What is your time?
QTV--Shall I stand guard for you ______?
QTX--Will you keep your station open for further
communication with me?
QUA--Have you news of ______?
* 25 year old radioman, Jack Phillips sent the Titanic
distress call on 500 kHz, the international emergency frequency.
That fateful night of 15 April 1912 his key called out, "CQD
DE MGY." CQD was the contemporary Morse distress signal and
MGY was the identification callsign of the Titanic.
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