[Yaesu] changes in rigs when CW dropped?

[waltah@earthlink.net]

David Willmore wrote:
> I see future radios as a 'block' that takes in/puts out RF energy on one
> side and communicates with a computer on the other.  Between the computer
> and the radio is just a digital connection--USB 2.0 would be good.

Clearly our radios are going to be computers on the inside.   It's not 
so clear just where the processor will be. 

For one thing, it will always be functionally simpler and smaller to 
have dedicated controls for the radio rather than doing it all through a 
keyboard, mouse, general touch panel, or whatever you conceive as 
the general purpose PC interface of the future.

Processing horsepower gets cheaper year by year.   Increasingly it's 
the programing and specialized peripherals you pay for, not the 
processor that actually executes the instructions.   In the time frame 
in which general purpose PCs become able to be radios just by 
connecting an antenna coil to a USB port, the Intel Inside (or 
whatever) is going to be a tiny fraction of the price of a serious radio. 

At a given state of processor technology, better radio performance 
will be attainable with 100% of the hottest current processor than 
with whatever fraction Windows 2050 (Bill Gates Memorial Edition -- 
insert credit card and place thumb on scanner to enable use of your 
computer) allows a user program.  

All these things being so, the processor might as well be inside the 
radio and dedicated to that function. 

This has been the trend throughout consumer products.   About 1990 
I bought a new gas furnace.   It's rather simple mind (is the 
thermostat telling me to make heat?   Is the flue open?   Is the pilot 
light on?  Did my main burner light quickly enough? ... ) was a 
microprocessor, rather than a bunch of relays as in previous 
generations.  It was definitely scary (for an ex programmer) at the 
time, but it worked fine.  Our microwave oven, stove, clock radio, to 
say nothing of the VCR all have microprocessors, my 1994 car, has 
several -- modern cars much more than that.   

Furthermore putting the Intel Inside inside a box marked Yaesu, 
makes it a lot more proprietary and a lot less subject to hacking.   
When everything is done in a processor, the features you pay extra 
for will be strictly programming with the addition of any necessary 
specialized peripherals.  Much easy to get you to pay $350 for a 
patch that changes a JMP to a NOP if it's in a Yaesu box than if it's 
in your own.

I'd look for radios to continue to evolve slowly in appearance and 
control interface.   Behind the faceplate interface, however, the 
change will be rapid over the next decade or two as *everything* 
becomes DSP from antenna to earphones and from the Heil to the 
automatic antenna tuner.   There's no conceptual problem and many 
advantages for all the players except the few who like rolling their 
own with real hardware.   

> ... every generation of radios in the past has always stirred up a
> cry of "this is as good as it gets, this is the last radio I'll ever buy."

There will better radios right along and I'll certainly buy radios in the 
future.   But while I can still lift my soldering iron, my assembled-from-
junk FT-101FE is the newest set I'll ever own.   Most others will see 
things differently and we're still perhaps a couple of decades from the 
theoretical limits.  After that, ham radios will be mature technology 
and will pass into near-commodity status (gasoline, beer ...)   You 
can like whatever you like but the differences are just marketing and 
price.

Walt Hutchens
KJ4KV