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überarbeitet am 3.7.2010
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Grundig Yacht Boy 400
When I saw this Grundig Yacht Boy 400 the first time, I felt quite irritated,
as the new model of the Yacht Boy 40, a completely different set came to my mind.
This Yacht Boy is a compact single superhet travel radio with bandspread dial
of the most common 6 shortwave bands. Under the same designation Yacht Boy 400,
Grundig presented a travel radio with PLL synthesized tuning and digital frequency
readout more then ten years later.
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single conversion superhet
analog dial,
UKW, LW, MW, 6 x SW,
49, 41, 31, 25, 19, 16 m with bandspread
AM, FM - VHF
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sensitivity
digital clock, timer
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The Grundig Yacht Boy 400 is a portable multiband "pocket radio",
with it's dimensions of 22,3 x 13,4 x 4 cm and a weight of 700 g, it will fit
in Your coat pocket or find some space in Your suitcase without problems.
The Yacht Boy 400 is an early example of the small Grundig travel portables
with a bandspread dial for several shortwave bands; it is quite similar to the the Yacht Boy 120,
the upgraded Yacht Boy 100 with an integrated quartz clock from 1982
The set was available in black and in silver colour.
The set covers VHF / FM, long and mediumwaves and six broadcast shortwave bands
from 49 - 16 meters.
In the middle of the front panel, You find the slide control for volume,
a rotary tone control and a sliding switch to select one of the six shortwave
wavebands.
The analog dials for the wavebands are located at the right half of the frontpanel,
the tuning knob on the right side of the cabinet. Four pushbuttons are used to switch on
the set and to select the waveband, a fifth smaller orange pushbutton switches off
the radio.
A tiny window for the quartz clock is located above the round speaker grill.
You can set the clock to display the time, the
minutes and seconds only and the alarm time; You can let the timer to wake You up by radio music
or a buzzer sound.
I red glowind LED next to the tuning dial will act as signal strength indicator
for strong stations.
The set is powered by five AA batteries for the radio and an additional
clock battery, there is a connector for a matching Grundig external power
supply. The antenne is a 70 cm flexible / rotating telescopic antenna, the
set ofers no external antenna connector.
The set has an adequate sensitivity on shortwaves, but it's analog dial with coarse
frequency markings is a serious drawback, the set receives only on six
shortwave broadcast bands, the 22 meter band is omitted and out of band channels
cannot be tuned.
With it's clock timer, the Grundig Yacht Boy will make a fine travel radio
as long as You rely on FM and mediumwaves and just want to catch up some news
from the BBC or Deutsche Welle. If You really have to rely on informations
from Your home on shortwaves, You should invest some money in a set with
digital frequency display - from this aspect, the Grundig Yacht Boy 400
can be considered as collector's item that sometimes can be found for a few
Euros at an online auction. Don't confound this set with the later variant
of the Yacht Boy 400, a completely different radio with PLL synthesis and a digital
frequency display which did appear in 1994 and did find great popularity.
© Martin Bösch 3.7.2010
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