On 1/26/2019 9:27 AM, Manfred Mornhinweg wrote:
Now of course this deviates a lot from the main topic of this forum,
which is add-on amplifiers that mostly amplify a 100W signal into a
1500W one. But this also illustrates that add-on amplifiers should be
considered obsolete. There are simply too strong advantages in
integrating the 1500W stage into a transmitter, rather than adding it
externally.
Even with the advantage, "I think" we will see some good stuff fail.
In "the tube days" there were several legal limit transceivers that
worked quite well, but sold poorly. Whether this was due to price,
esthetics, or just the ham's way of doing things, I have no idea
Given the sizes and costs, this approach will produce something like a
legal limit amplifier with built-in transceiver. The one I'm
developing should end up being a black box with just a power switch
and a speaker on the front panel, and an AC power inlet, antenna
connector and ethernet connector on the back panel. Most of the signal
processing, and the entire user interface including microphone and
PTT, are centered on a computer. The black box can easily be
remote-located, for example at the antenna tower, with just a power
line and an ethernet cable (or optical fiber) running there.
I have a Yaesu FT 5000MP that has 70 some controls on the front panel,
but with the menus a number of these have a number of functions. I'd
guess that 75% of these controls could be eliminated as I've never
touched them since it came out of the box. I also have an Anan 8000DLE
SDR with open source software. Please, no one give the users a book on
programming. I spent hours rewriting and adding internal documentation
to programs written by people who purchased a programming for dummies
book and thought, "I can do this" and never understood "side effects".
One guy wrote great programs, but I had to explain that some dat,
someone might need to make a change so they'd need to be able to read it.
That's bad news for hams who love playing with many knobs, buttons,
needle meters and so on, but it would produce better performance at
lower price.
For God's sake, take those knobs and switches away from the users. More
often than not they turn a rig that has a fairly clean signal into one
that spews ahhh... I'll just call it manure you can smell 50 KHz up and
down the band. They chop a 100 Hz off the top and add it to the bottom
for "that natural sound" and cant understand why people call them 100 Hz
low. So no, you were correct Manfred when you said it's not all the new
hams. Give 'em something simple like the old S-line with auto tune
added. Mike gain and drive and limit the speech processing:-D
Half of the users of the top end rigs don't understand the basics and
complain that with their receiver specs they can still hear the guy 5
KHz up with a 20 KHz wide signal from pushing his amp. Yes, he's 5 KHz
up, but part of his signal is in their pass band, but try to convince them.
With Pure Signal in another decade many of the old rigs with -20 to
-30db IMD will be gone. I wonder what the bands will be like then
I agree with you on the price. Using SDR "in the computer" and minimal
hardware (of good quality) you should be able to build a top end rig for
a fraction of the cos of the way the big three are doing it by
incorporating SDR technology into stand alone rigs.
The down side of this is if you can develop such a rig that would sell
at a reasonable price the big three would lose their profit margins.
(you'll need to make it pretty with fit and finish like the big three)
73, Roger (K8RI)
Manfred
========================
Visit my hobby homepage!
http://ludens.cl
========================
_______________________________________________
Amps mailing list
Amps@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/amps
--
Roger (K8RI)
_______________________________________________
Amps mailing list
Amps@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/amps
|