[TenTec]dreaming about a 100 w. mobile rig

[ac5e at comcast.net]

I suspect everyone who has ever done any mobiling will have opinions. For my two kopeks ....
Fifty watts with an AVAILABLE and RELIABLE 200 - 500 watt mobile amp would be quite reasonable, although a 100 watt rig with no amp would probably win the low list price derby.
With the exteme scarcity of places moden vehicles provide to mount a rig a detachable faceplate with a STOCK 25 foot extension cable would also be good. A decent faceplate mount is extremely desireable. Leave Mickey's engineering to other marques.  It should have sufficent audio to be heard over the road noise - and an included high efficency speaker - preferably with audio DSP. Having to buy a kit piece by piece to get it mounted is annoying. 
Any rig designed for mobile use should have the mininum number of faceplate controls to distract a driver - tuneng, tune, volume, bandswitching (band up only if it's necessary to use a single pushbutton but two button bandswiching would be better),  filtering, and mode; key and mike jacks on the faceplate are all that are really necessary for mobile use. Other controls could be on a menu system. The controls and buttons should be sufficently distinct that they can be manipulated by feel alone. 
'S enough.

73  Pete Allen  AC5E