BTW, speaking of communicating, if you'd read back, my position wasn't about efficiency, it was was simplicity, free communications, being off the grid, and using extremely low power.
Of course, you can spend lots of money per month hooked up to the web, VOIP, and hundreds of others schemes to take your money on monthly installment plans...
But that's not what I'm talking about.
Found the Kaito 1102 on sale today for 59.99
http://www.jr.com/product/productListing.jsp?Ntt=kaito+1102
Just ordered one.
Also, my Ten Tec RX320D had the front end blown out in a bad storm this AM while I was asleep :(