All the folks who have an idea of an ideal sweep, why don't you all put
the energy you have in the lamentations of the state of development,
into forming a users group and developer group who can reverse engineer
a third party sweep accessory to your taste? Isn't that the traditional
ham radio way?
If the rig does not have the knob you like, you find one and change it
to suit. If the factory provided mike is not to your taste, you buy a
third party mike. If the tuner does not do quite what you need, you
build a new tuner for tuning everything from a dipole to a wet noodle.
Manufacturers such as MFJ saw a niche for accessories, and moved into
that market. Elecraft came from two inspired designers who had been
involved with the "usual" QRP radio kits, and they said why not offer a
full featured radio kit? In the peak of the tube years post WW2, a
number of ham radio manufacturers sprang up to fill the need for full
featured radios that exceeded what a single ham could home brew.
I see the loss of a good programmer as a severe blow to any company
today in the high tech equipment markets. I think companies should bite
the bullet and have software teams so that if one goes away, there is
continuity in the department. (Sadly, programmers today do not chart
and document their work in the formalized way we were taught in the days
of mainframes. And some software people have the knack for picking up
what a program is doing and why, and many of us wish only for good
hardware and to not have to decode some program).
Good luck to those who might seek to push the state of the art a bit more,
-Stuart Rohre
K5KVH
|