> Mark, truly world-class radios like the FT-1000D have been in
> production well beyond 10 years. Until someone develops a better
> mousetrap, I have no doubt Orion will remain in production and
> will continue to be improved via updates. Sorry but Pegasus does
> not make my short list of world-class radios...Orion does.
I would agree that the Pegasus is not in the same class as the Orion or the
FT-1000. However, bang for buck, it's unbeatable.
I hope you are right about support and that the Orion will be a TOL rig in
10 years. I'm not that optimistic. In the personal computer world, we see a
doubling of performance every 18 months or so. Processing horsepower that
is NSA black-box stuff now or completely unavailable will likely be
commonplace in 5, let alone 10 years. It's unconceivable that purely
software (firmware) upgrades will keep the Orion up to date against such new
technology.
As long as I'm predicting the future, what do I see for ham radio equipment?
I think there will be a marriage of computer and transceiver. The
transceiver will dwindle to minimal hardware to interface the computer to
the antenna. More and more of the processing will be done inside the
computer. In fact, we've already seen the beginnings of this with the
Flex-Radio SDR-1000.
This is a good thing for hams, maybe less so for the current equipment
manufacturers. With the relatively small number of hams (compared to the
total consumer marketplace), there's not a lot of competition in the amateur
equipment marketplace. Hams are willing to pay top dollar for equipment
because that's what they have to do. On the flip side, look at computer
prices. There's so much competition that prices are continually coming
down. Also, because there are so many consumers, there are tons of choices
in add on equipment and features. So when the ham radio comuunity can figure
out how to leverage that eqiupment for ham radio use, there's no telling
what it could do to the current transceiver market.
And in response to another reply, I certainly hope that those
radio-computers are controlled with Linux or its latest descendent <g>.
Mark
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