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Re: [Amps] FCC Denies Expert Linears' Request for Waiver of 15 dB Rule

To: amps@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [Amps] FCC Denies Expert Linears' Request for Waiver of 15 dB Rule
From: "Roger (K8RI)" <k8ri@rogerhalstead.com>
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2017 03:11:19 -0500
List-post: <amps@contesting.com">mailto:amps@contesting.com>
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

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