On Mar 9, 5:00Â pm, Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
On Mar 6, 12:56� am, Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
On Mar 5, 3:09�pm, Dave Heil wrote:

Remember too that in the 1970s US ham radio was growing fast. This was
right after the 1968-1969 "incentive licensing" changes which some
said were going to destroy amateur radio. The numbers tell a different
story.

They surely do. Â About the time I first became licensed, I think ther
e
were about 300k radio amateurs in the U.S. and only about 100k in the
entire rest of the world.

I'm not sure of the exact year you were licensed but if it was in the
1960s the number of US hams was about 250K not 300K. As for the rest
of the world, 100K back then was pretty accurate *except* for Japan's
4th class licenses.

In that time period, a number of the
classic US ham radio manufacturers were losing their founders, either
through sale of the company or retirements, etc.

Right. Â The Drake firm stayed in the family and Swan stayed with the
original owner until he sold it to Cubic, circa 1980.

And we see what happened...

All Southgate Radio receivers from the Type 3 onward have had slow
tuning rates - typically 5 to 7 kHz per turn. That's about 1969 to the
present.

...and that's a good tuning rate.

I used to wonder why most older equipment tuned so fast. One reason
was cost; a simple string or pinch drive cost a lot less than gears.
But even expensive stuff like the HROs had fast tuning by Southgate
standards.

I think the way hams operated in the past was a big reason. Split
operation was pretty standard even before crystal control was common
in ham rigs, so if you called CQ, an answer might be anywhere in the
band.

Around 1964, National introduced the solid state, synthesized
HRO-500. Â They were expensive problem children. Â There have been

numerous problems with the PLL circuitry. Â I bought one in 1997 and i
t
had (Surprise!) PLL problems. I sold it.

Even with a working PLL, the '500 had bad intermod and dynamic range
problems for such an expensive rx.

About the only company besides Collins that was able to come into the
ham radio market at the top was Signal One - which didn't last.

Kachina tried it and that didn't last very long.

Kachina had an entirely new concept: the computer-controlled rig
without a front panel. That still hasn't really caught on.

Well, that leaves us discussing what was built vs. what might have been

built.

Point is, the Japanese rigs put those features in from the get-go,
while the
American rigmakers didn't.

Right. Â It was a new game. Â The JA manufacturers recognized that
bells
and whistles would lure buyers.

Not just bells and whistles but basic things like RIT, sharp filters,
decent dial drives and the ability to turn off the AGC.
Built in or as options, not as mods.

Varactor in the PTO?

Yep, with a relay switching scheme.

The Southgate Type 6 and Type 7 achieve RIT without a varactor diode.
In fact, there are no solid state devices at all in either rig except
for two 1N34As in the SWR bridge of the Transmatch.

Guys argued with Drake for ages about the inclusion of CW filters and
RIT in the transceivers. � The Drake folks couldn't understand
how any
one
would need such things. �

Interesting! I always thought the reason they were left out was so
that folks would buy the separates.

Not exactly. Â Drake figure that anyone who wanted to use CW *would* b
uy
the separates. Â They just didn't figure that there was a market for
transceivers among regular users of CW. Â The light finally dawned.
Of course that the meager CW features of the TR-4CW gave way to the
advanced features of the TR-5 and TR-7.

Which cost a bit more....

Sherwood has tested the Elecraft K3. Next issue of QST will carry a
Product Review of it too.

Yep. Â The numbers look very, very good. Â These days though, the
difference between very good and very, very good is just a smidgen.

Point is, you can get a very very good rig, American made, with direct
connection to the makers of the rig, for less than a lot of mid-range
rigs from Japan.

'Course not. But they weren't the target market, either. The SB-101/
HW-101 crowd were.

Uh-huh. Â It marked the end game for Heath. Â The company just did
n't
realize it right away.

Part of what changed too was the economy of kitbuilding. In the days
of point-to-point wiring, a lot of the cost of manufactured
electronics was the assembly labor. Kits eliminated that, but added
the cost of the assembly manual and the inevitable problems of
supporting the kitbuilders. Automated and semiautomated PCB-based
manufacturing drastically reduced the assembly-labor cost.

Another factor was alignment cost. Heath had to design their rigs so
they could be aligned with minimal test gear. That's one reason for
the preassembled LMO in the SB line and the preadjusted, sealed BPFs
in them. That limit on design flexibility doesn't exist for a
manufacturer who can spread the cost of test equipment over many
units.

I remember that towards the end of its run the HW-101 price reached
$449, which was almost double its introductory price less than a
decade earlier. That was without power supply, speaker, mike or sharp
filter. And you had to build it. FT-101/TS-520S took that market!

Right. Â Don't forget that the JA rigs not only had an inboard,
multi-voltage AC power supply; they included a DC supply for mobile use
as well.

Sort of. The TS-520S required the optional bolt-on DC-5 DC supply
adapter for DC operation of the transmitter section. It consisted
mostly of power transistors and a heat sink. It would not operate the
'520 at full power; you were limited to about half power. In the
TS-520SE, the last version, the DC option was eliminated and the rig
became AC-mains only.

 Neither of the two rigs mentioned actually came with a CW
filter. Â Those were optional accessories.

Yup - but not an expensive one.

I just look in the Southgate inventory.

I can do that with many items. Â There are some modern things which I
just have to buy.

The first way will be the renovators, who make a few good rigs from a
pile of problem sets. This is already starting to happen; look on ebay

for "TS-940" and you will see lots of parts for sale.

Okay. � Gone are the days when you reach into bins of transisto
r or IC
's
and expect to be able to repair much of anything. � Large scale

integrations and specialty chips took care of most of that.
Kenwood rigs in particular seem to suffer. � The 930's, 850's a
nd 940'
s
are examples of rigs where the displays and display drivers aren't
available any longer.

Agreed but there will be some rigs that have other problems but good
displays.

Oh yes, but those fluorescent displays, unlike the typical LED displays,
go bad with time and use.

I have enough #47 pilot lights for the foreseeable future...

I knew a guy who once had machinists make him a part for a Cadillac
power seat instead of paying what he considered to be an outrageous
price for the part from GM. Â I think he spent about four times what G
M
wanted.

bwaahaahaa

And consider: $125 for a reduction tuning knob for a receiver that
went out of production more than 45 years ago?

But those receivers are apt to be around for another few decades and are
highly prized. Â As I recall, there's still an outfit making highly
stable digital remote VFOs for the Collins KWM-2 series.

You can get almost anything you need for an S-line or the R-390/A.
Including high-quality videos on how to do the work.

There are folks still building HBRs today, from scratch.
I'd think that getting some of the parts could be really difficult.

You'd be surprised what folks have squirreled away....

Nooooooo, I don't think I would. Â W9ZR asked in the boatanchors
newsgroup if anyone had the bowl insulator from an ART-13. Â I sent hi
m one.

I bet it wasn't the only one you had.

In reality the only unobtanium parts are the coil forms and IF cans.
One trick is to use ARC-5 IFTs instead. But I prefer original
Southgate designs.

Those IF transformers are one of the things I was thinking about. Â I
have loads of large and miniature 455KC stuff, but nothing like the
higher frequency cans.

A BC-454 (tuning range 3-6 Mc.) has a 1415 kc. IF.

I'm looking at the Tokyo Hi Power 1.5 KW job, but it is expensive. Â I
f
the Starkville, Mississippi gang gets their act together, we may see an
affordable high power, solid state amp in the near future.

The K3 has put the Elecraft amps on the back burner for a while. I
suspect that will change once the slack runs in.

73 de Jim, N2EY