Why did it all get off the track? Many years ago, any phone rig had a two
conductor mike connector that had a screw on shell, and coaxial contact. In
those days TR was a switch on the transmitter, and receiver to go from Talk
to listen. There was 1/4 inch phone jack for the key and Headphones had a
jack too.
On mobile equipment, you had a tip, ring sleeve mike jack, so that you could
have push to talk activation of a TR relay. That became popular with early
transceivers as well.
Why did Yaecomwood bring in the multipin connectors that were not common to
North America?
Of course, partly it was driven by use of Touch Tone mikes on FM rigs, but
then they added them to HF rigs, and standardization went out the window.
Perhaps there is good reason to keep the PTT keying leads a separate pair
from audio ground and thus the 4 pin Ten Tec mike plug makes sense.
But, you can also see that rigs used to have standard 1/4 inch phone jacks
for headphones and now there are many variations, as rigs have gotten
smaller. Also, you now see the RJ 45 type mike connectors as well as the 8
pin round on import rigs. Where will it stop? Can hams as a group, or as
clubs and national societies, establish standards committees and get all
manufacturers to use common connectors for mike, key, phones, external
speakers, TNC's, Computer control, etc.?
One sad fact is that the computer industry fell down in standards setting on
connectors and I/O conventions. After many years of the serial port and
standard RS 232 that could be implemented as full handshake or as a simple
Transmit, receive, and ground, with loop backs on controls, now we see the
I/O flavor of the year. We lose the serial, simple interfaces, and the do
everything parallel interfaces; and you never know which standard will catch
the fancy of computer designers next month. Is it any wonder some of us
prefer a radio to be a manually controlled radio only, or have all modes
built in rather than worrying the configurations of I/O and external
controllers?
The cost of building radios and buying them would come down, for the
features contained, if each maker did not have to buy small quantities of
connectors rather than buying a mass produced standard connector. About the
only standard connector still seen is the UHF antenna connection, and that
is beginning to vary with BNC and N appearing on some equipment. Of course,
there are good reasons for BNC and N, and maybe those two should win out for
all uses.
At one time there was a industry group of amateur radio manufacturers,
spearheaded by the editors of radio magazines. After incentive licensing,
such groups fell by the wayside with the decline of old line manufacturers
like Hallicrafters, Hammerlund, etc.
I think it is about time to raise a cry to standardize power and input/
output connections and improve the lot of the poor ham trying to tie several
incompatible, (connector wise) rigs to accessories and other station
equipment.
73,
Stuart
K5KVH
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