[SignalOne] Some SIGNAL ONE History

[FrankLohrmann at aol.com]

Hello Doc,

my callsign is DL8FL and I am on the air since  about 40 years and still a 
very active DXer.
With greatest  interest I have been reading your article today about the 
SIGNAL/ONE history. In the late 70`s I owned a CX7B with the aditional cw-filter. 
This one I bought from Douglas Electronic in Corpus Christi. Not so easy from 
Germany at that time. The radio looked impressive on my operating-desk and it 
had many features which other ham-gear didn`t have at that time as you know. 
But as an active DXer I was disappointed from the beginning regarding the 
overloading of the receiver-rf-stage and also the sensitivity on 15 and 10 was not 
too good.  --  Then the new CX11a came out as you are describing it in your 
story. With the aditional cw-filter and the blower-option for the final and with 
shipping and taxes at that time the radio cost me more than 10.000 $ to get 
it on my operation-desk in the radio-room.  It was the first CX11a sold in 
Germany and one of the very few sold to Europe.The radio was totally different and 
looked even more impressive. Today I read  many legends  about this 
"super-radio", but I quickly found out that the receiver suffered severely from the 
much too high synthesizer phase noise and also the sensitivity on 21, 24 and 28 
Mc was not too good. Honestly  said I was disappointed from the very first 
moment about a radio at such a high price. I think many of these legends have to 
do with the fact that all those who could afford such a pricy rig at that time 
also had super antennas who did the trick.  -- After very few months in use 
several failures occured which I couldn`t fix here in Europe. Many phone-calls 
with Don Roehrs and sending the radio back to the States, back to Germany, back 
to the States etc seemed to become a never ending story, because it cost me 
an awful lot  of money and S/O still couldn`t fix all the problems. This 
reminds me very much of  you experienced in California (I had many QSOs with W6AOA) 
with S/O and with Don Roehrs personally. Because of this non-service I finally 
gave my CX11a away, because I got so angry!! May be I should have kept it as 
a collectors-piece. But at that time I didn`t want to have a radio-museum, but 
a top-of-the-line rig,hi.
It might be of interest to your history-research that in those times (1980 - 
1990) I was sometimes called-up by W6BH Southern California who offered to me 
a California-built CX11B .  He  obviously designed and produced (?)this radio 
( but I only heard W6BH using a CX11B) at the same time when Don Roehrs 
produced the CX11a in Phoenix,AZ.

>From my point of view the milspec 1030 (who was cheaper in the beginning as 
the CX11a) was a step back and had the same big receiver-problems. But because 
of my very bad experience with the S/O-service I never considered to pay one 
of these radios.

Think this reminiscence could be of interest to you.
I send to you my very best 73 and good dx from Southern Germany, close to 
Stuttgart where the famous Mercedes- and Porsche-cars are built,hi

Frank Lohrmann, DL8FL