". . . 'technical innovation' has certainly bloated the price of Icom
and Yaesu's
$10,000 flagships, but their upconversion main receiver designs
inherently
limits in-close cw reception performance. This ain't rocket science,
just a
real head scratcher why only Ten-Tec seems to get it.
Barry N1EU"
Hi, Barry et al:
At least from ICOM's point of view, it's not a head scratcher. The
IC-7800 is an amateur market derivative of a basic platform ICOM
developed to serve a number of different markets. The last time I
looked, ICOM is the only amateur transceiver manufacturer making a
profit--the bulk of its sales are outside amateur radio and I hear
its selling thousands of the IC-7800 clones. (Ten-Tec, being
privately held, does not release financial results. However, if T-T's
focus is on hams only, and CW performance first, as has been
suggested, then one would not want to bet the farm on its survival
(See FCC Docket No. 05-235, 7/19/05).
As to Yaesu, it has taken a big gamble with the FTdx9000 series due
both to the substantial development costs and the fact that this
radio does seem designed solely for the amateur market. Hard to
recoup a big investment with such a tiny market. I doubt that close-
in IMD numbers (<3 kHz) are going to be make or break with potential
customers, however.
In fact, I suspect very few hams make their choice of a transceiver
on this basis, especially since riding the RF gain is a proven way of
dealing with contest-like IMD conditions, and most transceivers will
respond well to this simple solution. In fact, as I understand it,
some folks still have the habit of turning off the AGC under
difficult conditions!
73,
John, W3ULS
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