Yaesu and Icom still make 160-440 rigs. Yaesu had the 897D W 100W HF
and 50 MHz. I think it was 50W on 144 and 440 all modes. I believe they
have replaced it with a new line.
Icom had the 700. A better rig for a few hundred more.
The rigs from both companies made great mobile rigs, but they were menu
driven with little room for panel controls. I found the 897D to be more
intuitive. I still have one out in the shop that I used mobile and
storm chasing when both hands worked. It hasn't been used in about 5 years.
Both still offer the same, or similar rigs.
73, Roger (K8RI)
On 1/5/2017 10:04 AM, Manfred Mornhinweg wrote:
Cathy, Jim, and all,
I have seen many, many online posts asking for an all-mode VHF/UHF
rig that doesn't include HF. These used to be available, but have
disappeared.
Such rigs appeared on the market at a time when there was a growing
swarm of active ham satellites in orbit. Yaesu brought out the three
band FT-726R, and shortly later the four band FT-736R. Kenwood offered
the three band TS-790, while Icom entered competition with the very
expensive three band IC-970, and then added the more affordable
two-band IC-820. All these radios were intended for satellite
operation, offering full-duplex crossband operation and crossband
transponder frequency tracking. The FT-726 needed an optional module
for this. The three latter radios also had computer control interfaces.
Around 1990 it looked like amateur satellite operation was here to
stay, and that made many hams, including myself, buy such a radio,
which created the marked for these models. I bought an FT-736R,
complete with the optional band modules for 6 meters and 23cm, and
used the 6m module as an IF for a 13cm converter. This gave me fully
computer-controlled, multimode access to all four bands used on
satellites at the time.
But in the later 1990s ham satellite development started to decrease,
being pushed aside by private and institutional Cubesats posing as ham
sats. The manufacturers tried to keep sales up by offering radios that
could sort of operate on the more basic sats, but also had HF, such as
the FT-847 and the TS-2000. This was in the age of warped front
panels, that looked like they got too close to a heater.
As ham satellite activity collapsed after 2000, satellite operation
was no longer an important selling point, and so we came to see radios
that offer HF/VHF/UHF multimode coverage, but without significant
sat-specific functionality.
Bells and whistles are cheap, cheap, cheap. The cost of adding them
is negligible because they're mostly just firmware.
Exactly.
But when you want
higher power, better filtering, higher frequencies, etc. -- anything
that could be called "performance" -- the cost rises because the cost
of the raw components needed rises.
With SDR this changes. In many aspects the performance of SDRs can be
improved just by software.
The major reason why transverters are the popular option above 6M is
that even most of the dedicated VHF/UHF transceivers weren't very
good. Anyone who works those bands seriously uses transverters with
very low noise preamps.
The FT-736R indeed has a rather poor noise figure, but it has amply
sufficient dynamic range and selectivity, at least for my location.
And it actually makes little sense to include top notch preamplifiers
in an UHF radio, to give it a 0.4dB noise figure, because the coax
transmission line between the antenna and the radio will totally kill
that performance! So, the usual technique is to put that 0.4dB NF
preamplifier in a weathertight box and mount it at the antenna
feedpoint, then send the far more robust preamplified signal down the
line to the radio. At that level, a 7dB noise figure in the radio, or
even higher, is no problem. That's the design philosophy behind these
radios - and they feature support for such preamplifiers, having a
switch on the front panel that allows applying 12V power to the
antenna input of the currently active receiver.
I have heard that some people living close to UHF radar stations had
trouble with the dynamic range of these radios, but this problem
likely affected only a few users.
So, I would say that the RX performance of this radio is fine.
On the other hand, I have to agree that the FT-736R wasn't very good,
in terms of reliability. Mine went through over 20 failures! Most of
them in the first years of use, later it more or less stabilized. I
was able to repair most of them myself, but right now there is still a
popcorn noise problem affecting mostly the 70cm band RX, which I
haven't been able to track down. This problem appeared roughly in 2003
or so...
The local radio club has one of these too, and last time I checked,
nearly nothing of that radio worked. It hasn't got any maintenance in
over 20 years. Since there are no really usable sats, there is no
demand for VHF/UHF SSB operation, and the club station now uses newer
FM radios, while keeping the FT-736 as fancy decoration.
Frankly I don't have any use for SSB on 2m and higher either. Nor for
UHF. I'm now using my FT-736R just to access the regional VHF
repeaters. What a waste! And the bulk of my activity on the air, which
in the 1990s was concentrated on sats and packet radio, has reverted
to 40m SSB ragchewing.
Manfred
========================
Visit my hobby homepage!
http://ludens.cl
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