Majestic RT-195 DAB receiver

Every once in a while, someone forgets the peculiar quality of Majestic-branded products and buys one.

Not sure when this Majestic RT-195 radio was bought, but it reached end of life as the battery doesn't hold the charge anymore and the owner got fed up with its counterintuitive slowly-responsive menu system (the owner bought a modern, battery operated, FM-only radio). It receives FM, DAB and can work as Bluetooth and wired speaker. The display is a tiny 2 lines x 16 characters, while the case is quite large to produce better sound (?).

I got it with just one screw holding it together and the telescopic antenna removed. Since I live quite close to DAB transmiters, it could still receive most stations. I forcedly opened the case to reveal a small PCB, a 18650 battery and the loudspeaker.

The 18650 Li-xx battery can be replaced or even doubled-up in a 1S2P configuration. But is it worth? I reconnected the telescopic antenna, closed the case and did a listening test.

Quiet room, volume down, FM. First thing noticed: there is some "digital" interference in the audio output. I had observed the same design error in a Majestic or Roadstar digital multiband (LW, MW, SW, FM) radio some 30 years ago, when "PLL" was a buzzword to sell more products. The interference is audible at normal volume with music coming in from the tuned FM station.

Switching to DAB, the noise disappears and the audio is clean. Since I don't own other portable DAB receivers I cannot do a side-by-side comparison on the sensitivity side, but I might try from the car... once I replace the 18650 cell inside.

How to load PDFs on an iPad3 in 2026

I have some PDFs I want to read offline but the closest object to an eReader that I have access to is an iPad3 (A1396). Pretty old stuff, but it works, so why not (try)?

For the records, this A1396 runs iOS 9.3.5 (13G36) operating system - which is the latest version for this hardware and cannot be updated further - and the firmware is dated 2009.

I just want to (up)load my PDFs to the iPad storage and possibly keep it offline. Well, it looks like that with iTunes (old version, too, cannot update) I can only exchange pictures and videos.

The iPad has Safari 9, but surfing modern websites protected with recent https certificates and ciphers is a nightmare, if possible at all. 

What I know is that as long as Safari can open a PDF, it can be transferred to the local iBooks instance. 

I tried accessing a public Google Drive folder containing my PDFs but it looped. And no, I don't want to authenticate on Google Drive.

The situation is:

• iPad can access the local TCP/IP network and Internet
• Safari can "send" a PDF to iBooks, which is what I want
• Safari on the iPad is happy to open plain HTTP websites

The solution: fire up a plain HTTP webserver with directory listing enabled on local/home network, open each file with Safari and send it to iBooks. Not the fastest option, but still faster than all other failed attempts.

How to fire up a plain HTTP webserver? I did it with Python on the computer where I had PDFs:

• connect both the computer and the iPad to the same WiFi network 
• copy all PDFs in a folder on the computer
• open a terminal in that folder
• run the command python -m http.server 8888  (could be python3 ...)
• discover the IP address of your webserver (ipconfig/ifconfig)
• open Safari on the iPad and dial the IPaddress:8888 

If your computer's IP is 192.168.1.23 on Safari you'd open 192.168.1.23:8888 . 

Why port 8888? Just because it is easier to type. Any number between 1024 and 65000 is fine.

Enjoy your PDFs!