[Milsurplus] Re: BC-611

[Bob Camp]

Hi

Just to clarify - Galvin Manufacturing's main business in the 1930's 
was to make automotive radios. They came up with the Motorola brand 
name to sell these radios under. For their day these were compact 
rugged radios. We certainly don't look at them that way today, but they 
were small and rugged by the standards of the 1930's mass production 
market. The engineering group who did the radio certainly would have 
been familiar with auto radio design. The  "partitioning" of 
engineering and production came along later as the corporation grew.

The backpack with a phone handset vs radio in your hand thing was 
debated endlessly at Motorola, even 30 years later. The "accepted 
wisdom" was that the 611 inspired the entire two way FM product line. 
For a lot of years Motorola dominated that market (80 to 90% share). 
 From what I could see the 611 to HT-220 connection was a bit of a 
stretch technically. From a marketing standpoint the connection is 
pretty clear (same name).

Could the design have been done better in hindsight? Sure could have. 
At the time it was done there was not a lot of hand held prior art to 
go by. The antenna gets a lot of knocks as the weak point in the 
design. About all I can say is that they still have them on portables 
today. They survived into the 1960's in portable two way service. I 
think a tape would have worked better, but that wasn't the way they 
went. It would be very interesting to find out how the antenna design 
evolved.

The people who had worked on the 611 at Motorola were in their 60's 
back in the 1970's. I never met anybody who had done engineering on the 
radio, only people who knew people. Thirty years later they would be 
pretty hard to find. I'll ask around though.

	Take Care

		Bob Camp
		KB8TQ