Hello Manfred,
On Saturday, October 18, 2014, you wrote:
<BIG SNIP of fascinating musing>
> Here I agree with you. My FT-736's display is old, tired and very dark. The
> radio has about 130,000 hours on it. Almost all of the time the display was
> kept
> dimmed, but still it wore out and now I can't read it when dimmed, and only
> barely when undimmed. Guess what? That display is a vacuum tube, a fluorescent
> display. Instead my TS-450's display, which is even older and has seen roughly
> the same amount of use, is still perfect. That one is an LCD. But it's special
> too, and the day it fails, I either find a parts donor, or I can operate the
> radio only via computer. I would certainly prefer radios that use
> industry-standard parallel input dot matrix displays, which are made by many
> companies, and will remain available for a long time.
> Manfred
Hams should insist that the more exotic and costly new rigs have some
means of using an external monitor instead and as well as the built in
display panel. Personally I think trying to see a waterfall and RF
spectrum on the rigs displays is pretty useless, they need viewing on,
at the very least, a small computer monitor to be worthwhile. With my
HP8568B spectrum anaylser the display tube is obsolete and it's
getting harder to find good used replacements. However it also has a
monitor socket to run a separate, (and much bigger, if desired)
display, so all is not lost as it slowly darkens.
The industry standard dot matrix display is a great idea, but what
chance manufacturers agree to such a selfless act of kindness to us
end users? ;) Individuality has its costs...
Chris Wilson 2E0ILY
--
Best regards,
Chris mailto:chris@chriswilson.tv
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