I've purchased a few crank radios over the years, am pretty happy with the one I have right now. It's a Midland ER310, really packs a bunch of useful stuff into its case, I can just leave it in the window and let it maintain its battery pack with the wee solar panel. I bought it, and the previous ones, primarily for the hand crank power option, though. It feels to me like all of these radios have plastic gears in them - I stripped my first one by turning too vigorously - I feel like I have to treat them with kid gloves. Was wondering if there are any manufacturers making cranked emergency radios with metal gears, something stout enough to be tossed in trunk on the way out the door?

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