N2EY wrote:

In a lot of situations - and not just military ones - that it
continued to work is a lot more important than how advanced the radio
is.

I think the main point is that how "good" or "advanced" a rig is
depends in large part on the application, and judging military radio
stuff by amateur standards - or the reverse - is an apples-and-oranges
thing.

I think, here, we are starting to reach the same page, we may be viewing
it differently but we are, at least, viewing the same page.

I agree, Ruggedness (Continuing to work under adverse conditions) beats
"Advanced" in many cases and generally in most all military cases.

Fiction story: IN a Star Trek book some rick kid is putting down the
comm gear on the Enterprise till Uhura explains why the older clunkier
and easier to fix hardware beats the heck out of his little one chip
hyper-intergrated circuit radio. (Of course she's fixing it at the time)

Fact.. That is very true. something that can be "Field fixed" is better
than a "Toss it in the trash and break out a new one" epically if you
have a parts store but no complete new box




For example, the R-390 and R-390A were designed way back in the early
1950s, and one of the requirements was a digital frequency readout. A
lot of mechanical complexity went into producing a system where you
could just look at one set of numbers and know exactly (well, within a
couple of hundred Hz) where the receiver was tuned. No interpretation
needed. Such a feature would not appear in manufactured ham rigs until
the 1960s (National NCX-5) and wouldn't become common in ham rigs
until the 1980s.

I recall some digital readout hardware much earlier.. But then,,, When
you think about it. after WWII many hams used government surplus
hardware. So the Military stuff, BECAME the ham stuff.. Alas, modern
military rules kind of make that hard to do since they "De-militarize"
so much stuff.

Or consider the R-1051 receivers, which used a row of knobs to set
each digit of the frequency, rather than a single large knob. That
kind of frequency control became common in military HF sets but not in
ham gear, because the operating environments are so different.

Gee... I have a 2-meter rig in my motor home (Currently set to 146.52)
that is 30 years old and which you set the frequency by a row of dials
(Knobs turned sideways) just like you describe. It's 100% ham. The
Wilson WE-800 Revision 3 (3rd production run) and I might add, it had
operated from -40 to well over 120 degrees. F