[AMRadio] Illegal 27 & 28 MHz amplifier sales

[Donald Chester]

>From: "Ed Sieb" <esieb at sympatico.ca>

...when Yaesu released the FT-101, with 11m
>built-in, the whole 11M band finally went to hell in a hand-basket, and 
>took
>500 kHz either side with it.

Back in the early 1980's, I ran the service dep't of a 2-way radio/ham radio 
outfit, and we did a lot of amateur radio service work from all over North 
America, including warranty work for Yaesu.

Well over 80% of the FT-101 series we got in for repair (excluding the 
FT-101ZD, which is a totally different radio), whether owned by licensed 
hams or not, had 11m xtals installed, with transmit enabled. The earlier 
versions came with the xtals installed as a standard feature, with "11" 
indicated on the band select control.  On later models, they changed "11" to 
"aux" and the 11m. band xtals became optional and had to be ordered extra.  
The rig came receive-only for this band, but I recall it was a matter of 
either cutting or installing one wire to make it fully transceive.  
According to the Yaesu manual, the orginal 11m. "receive" capability was 
offered as a feature so hams could listen for CB activity to tell when 10m. 
might be open (yes, of course!)  Later manuals said the "aux" feature was 
supposed to make it possible to receive anywhere you chose outside the ham 
bands (one 500 kHz segment only), but it only worked in the vicinity of 27 
hHz.  It would have taken a major modification to make it work elsewhere on 
HF.

That was just after the CB boom had peaked out, and the vast majority of new 
hams had got their start in radio via CB.  When I became licensed in 1959, 
most hams including myself got their start via shortwave listening.

When the CB boom finally crashed to rock-bottom around 1982 or 83,  the 
outfit I worked for went out of business, and so did many other amateur 
equipment suppliers, except for the big ones like AES and HRO. VHF 2-way 
alone wasn't enough to sustain the company where I worked, especially after 
the FCC deregulated the Land Mobile service and the commercial 
radiotelephone licence (by then degraded to "General Radiotelephone") was no 
longer required to legally repair and install commecrial and government 
2-way radio systems.  Every small town police and fire department in the 
country decided they could save money by relying on a local CB'er who 
happened to work in their department to keep their radio system going.

Does that tell you anything about the amateur community that exists today, 
and the fact that the ham bands in the US were rapidly going down the toilet 
when Riley came on the scene?

Don k4KYV

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