Questions about the reliabiliity of modern transceivers have been raised on
this reflector and thought I would parade a few ideas.
I was licensed back in 1953. At that time you could say that all equipment
in the average ham shack was home repairable if not home built.
Since then equipmet has got smaller, more complex and versatile and in most
cases beyond the skills and facilities of all but a handful of owners to
service.
And increased complexity means that while few radios are dogs in terms of
their initial design, it is not impossible to get a lemon that develops
multiple faults or just never quite performs to expectation.
When my much loved TS930S had its power supply go high, which in turn cooked
some of the circuitry leading to one fault after another, I battled away
making the unit good until finally giving up in frustration and despair.
Maybe I will get back to it one day.
On reflection I had to acknowledge that the unit was some 15 years old and
was probably well beyond its design life. Or from another point of view, it
really had not cost me much per day to use, and from a purely cost
accounting point of view I could hardly complain if I wrote it off.
Also reflected on the Buddhist axiom that suffering comes when things that
are transient are treated as permanent.
I also reflected as my aging eyes and large fingers did their best to work
amongst the thicket of tiny parts and thread-like PC tracks on the signal
board that the thing had not been designed to be readily serviced.
Some dark mutterings about unscrupulous Orientals gave way to the
realisation that an earlier generation of quality Japanese radios had
individual circuit boards plugged into the main frame, and were clearly
designed to be easliy serviced or even modified, hot rodded or whatever.
I do not recall any cottage industry of exchange or enhanced radio boards
growing up, so I assume that the reliability and performance was more than
satisfactory for the bulk of the customers.
I would say that Ten-Tec are the only major manufacturer who produces radios
that are designed and built with some thought to home service or
modification, and they have not taken the bulk of the market.
So the moral of ths story is that what we have is very much the result of
those Market Forces we read about in economics texts.
>From a purely economic point of view I think the modern rigs are in fact
good value for money, particularly in view of the relatively restricted
market, which is probably near saturated in any case. For example, one would
have to be a bit of a fanatic (not an insult) to trade the FT1000MP for the
FT1000MP Mark V.
Now I see that Kachina is giving it away.
But what the hell, I can always fire up the Collins or the Drake twins...
73
end
Barry Kirkwood PhD ZL1DD
Signal Hill Homestay
66 Cory Road
Palm Beach
Waiheke Island 1240
NEW ZEALAND
www.waiheke.co.nz/signal.htm
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