It's funny how times change. Back in the early 80's it
was Icom who took VHF/UHF SSB/CW seriously when the
others didn't, now they seemed to be dropping the ball
pretty left and right for some reason. I suspect that
part of the decision to leave out VHF/UHF on the 703
was to keep power consumption to an absolute minimum,
the other I'm sure is cost. All that aside they really
blew it big time with the ad in QST. They are also
taking a pot shot a Elecraft too, I think they've
completely missed the point of why people want and
like to build the K2's, another dumb marketing
campaign move.
Who knows maybe they have something else in mind for
VHF/UHF SSB/CW? If so then some of the technical
design decisions for the 703 will be somewhat
vindicated, will have to wait and see. There
definitely is a place for low power highly portable
VHF/UHF gear.
For my home shack I've gone the 100% transverter route
for all VHF/UHF bands. This is because none of the
current JA VHF/UHF capable offerings even come
remotely close to being able to do what I want to do.
Duane
N9DG
EN53bj
--- Greg Mills <gmills@frontiernet.net> wrote:
> Sounds like some of us want the inverse of the 703,
> a "709". No HF, but
> would have 6m, 2m, 432... maybe it would be a
> "cheap" radio then? Would
> that make room for 220 or 1296 or maybe 900?
>
> Oops, that sounded like the "dream radio" thread we
> already had a few
> months ago.
>
> Greg - K2LDT
>
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