We got this little radio with our boat but it had a few issues. The battery life was terrible and the antenna was falling apart.
There is something very useful about the HH400, and that is that it can hold normal AA batteries, making it instantly invaluable as a grab-bag radio.
In normal operation it uses rechargeable AA batteries, and I replaced these with some modern NiMH pre-charged batteries (the type that loses almost no charge over a period of months/years).
Everything was great until I put the radio on the charger – nothing happened.
After some head scratching I found that there was a little metal tab in the slot where the first cell goes. It turns out that the rechargeable batteries used in this device need to make contact with this tab to charge. I stripped some of the plastic off the NiMH cell and lo and behold it worked.
The antenna was not salvageable, and this device has a slightly unusual SMA female connector. Amazon to the rescue and for ~£10 we had a foldable 2M/70cm dual band antenna with a male SMA connector. I am sure a single band 2M would be better but the dual band antenna’s are ubiquitous on Ebay and Amazon.
Does it work? We’ll find out next time we’re on board.
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