Well Adam, what I had in mind were the excellent build it yourself kits of
Ten Tec and others. Thank goodness, that skill is alive and well, and many
good radios are out there that you can build yourself and are simple and
work well, even without a computer in the box! And you CAN fix it yourself,
which is part of the spirit and reason for Amateur Radio as it was set up in
the USA.
And to their credit, modern designers have even eliminated the mechanical
complexity of old radios, which actually reached a peak in the WW2 time
frame. (ART 13 being one of the best examples, an auto tuning transmitter
full of solenoids, motors, and mechanical gee gaws.) You can now tune with
either variable capacitor, (still!) varicap diode, or optical encoder.
Simplicity is alive and well in part of amateur radio, and we all gain from
the breakthroughs talented designers make honing their skills on "doing more
with less".
73, Stuart K5KVH
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