On Fri, 23 May 2008, Middle Aged Ham wrote:


Why are almost all the new HF ham radios so ugly?

Good question, but I agree. All black, lots of knobs & buttons, and you
have to read the manual (thick, does it have mistakes & bugs?) before you
can use it. I used to have a TS-520. I knew how to use it without reading
the manual (just from basic principles), and readout which is too "busy".

HF Ham radios use
to be a thing of beauty,

I always thougth the Colins S line (etc) to be the absolute tops in
esthetics. Old Halicrafters (SX-99, 101, 96, 100, etc., my next second
best).

but now most of them are butt ugly!

Yeah, and I'd rather look at the Mona Lisa.

Icom Radios all look like oversized Palm Pilots

Kenwood HF Radios - What where they thinking?
TS-480? - Yuck! I would not want that thing on my desk.
TS-2000 - Deaf, poor selectivity, and ugly.

Technology evolution has all geared to _specification_ features and not
good common sense. Who needs 200 frequecy memories? What fraction of all
hams really "watch TV" on the spectrum analyzer readout on the blowout
rigs. How many of those knobs go "beep" when you push them?

More below...

Ok. The Yaesu FT-2000 is nice looking, but according to EHam.net
reviews there are issues with the AGC popping, and the 3 kHz roofing
filter actually being wider than the 6 kHz roofing filter. I'm
holding out for future fixes on this one.

Yaesu FT-950 -mildly ugly
Yaesu FT-897D - really ugly
Yaesu FT-857D - compact and ugly
Yaesu FT-817ND - Looks like it has warts on it's face
Yaseu FT-450 - Pretty ugly

TenTecOrion II and Omni VII - Oversized Palm Pilots.

Now the Kenwood TS-940 was a good looking radio.
The Drake TR-7 was nice looking.
The Yaesu FT-980 was sharp looking.
The Yaesu FT-1000d was nice looking
The TenTec Omni VI was nice looking.

The same thing happened to component stereo systems. In the 1970s and
1980s they were gorgeous, but now they are ugly black metal boxes.

If you think about all the sci-fi movies, high tech military movies, its
the same thing. Overdone details.

What happened to the radio equipment that you could display proudly
for everyone to see instead of something so ugly even the owner does
not want to look at it?

You've got a tough life ahead of you: try to find those old boat anchors
and try to restore one (xcvr) or two (xmtr-rcvr), and use it.

Me, I'm building my own homebrew all tube gear, out of junk box parts.
Looks like hell (nobody would give me 50 cents for it) but I love it and
can fix it myself (and its worth a million bucks to me).