[TenTec] Waiting for Transceiver Nirvana

[John Rippey <w3uls@3n.net>]

While waiting for zero hour of the CQ WW CW contest, these thoughts occur 
on the recent postings re software-driven base station rigs.

1.  They are (with the odd exception of the IC-746PRO) damnably expensive. 
If it's not the chips that make them so, then it is the humungous 
engineering effort needed to make them work well.

2.  If Moore's law still prevails, then any chip chosen for a 
software-driven radio will be replaced in 18 months by one that is half as 
costly and that has twice the computing power. Ergo, much more so than with 
the analog rigs we know and love, rapid obsolescence of the latest and 
greatest software-driven rig is a given.

3.  Because the ham market is downscale with regard to pricing, we do not 
see the performance in ham market software-driven transceivers that is 
available up-market. Compromises in ham gear necessarily are made: in 
selection of chips, and in their engineering, to meet the ham market price 
point (ICOM obviously will be testing the upper limits of the ham market 
with its IC-7800). There are all kinds of compromises in the ICOM PROs, and 
so also in the ORION, hence the discussions on this and other reflectors.

4. Therefore, while we may like to think we are seeing in the latest rigs 
the absolute latest and greatest--we aren't, and we won't. After all, we're 
radio amateurs.

5.  The bad news is that as advances in this genre gradually trickle down 
to hams, the resulting rigs will be expensive (by ham standards), their 
performance will be markedly better than their predecessors, and we'll 
repeatedly have to dig into our pocketbooks to pay for that performance if 
we just cannot live without the next new thing.

In short, chasing after transceiver nirvana is going to be an expensive 
fling. I may opt out.

73,
John, W3ULS



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