Cyclone Steve

by Macca
(Darwin, NT)

too cheap and nasty

I was doing some relief teaching in a remote community in the Northern Territory in 2000 when Cyclone Steve came my way. I had been warned about the possibility of extreme weather at that time of year, and I had (or so I thought) prepared myself for this in part by taking my solar torch / radio with me.

The cyclone came over the town and smashed things up a bit which was really scary, but the damage was not too bad. One thing that did fail was the power so for two days I had the opportunity to use the torch radio thingie. It worked okay, I could listen to the radio and use the torch for a while at night, as long as I used the winding handle as well.

But on the second day the winding handle broke off. I opened it to try to fix the handle and four of the little plastic tubes that the screws screw into to hold it together broke off. Also, the handle was made of really thin plastic which made it impossible to glue together. Everything about it was cheap, only made to look good and be sold.

I think the idea is a good one and I might get another one, but I'll sure be looking at the quality of it first.