[Yaesu] Big rigs, small rigs, new rigs, old rigs

[Martin Sole]

I think the talk being provoked by the new radio from Yaesu is a great
discussion if a little open ended, I wonder how the radio manufacturers of
ham gear do their market research? Certainly shrinking rigs came with
increasing micro technology and maybe further fuelled by smaller and smaller
living spaces, at least in some countries. I think maybe that a return to
the bigger rigs is being driven by a realization that a certain amount of
hardware is actually necessary to give a certain level of performance this
resulting in a certain minimum size. I think there has also been a lot of
feedback from users saying they wanted a bigger radio with easier use, less
menus etc. Looking at the new Yaesu front panel I see a lot of knobs, true,
but this strikes me as better than having one knob and having to search for
the function is some obtuse menu system. I think it will be interesting to
see just how these new radios stack up both in terms of real RF performance
and also true feature set.

The price for either the Yaesu or Icom currently being talked about seems
just about right to me. They aint cheap, tis true but in real world terms
how does this stack up against other hobbies. What does a sailboat cost, a
Cessna, a drag racing car, etc etc. I can't afford any of them either but I
cannot say I think they are necessarily over priced.

73's
Martin, HS0ZED


-----Original Message-----
From: yaesu-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:yaesu-bounces at mailman.qth.net]
On Behalf Of kd5czm1 at iwon.com
Sent: 18 May 2004 05:19
To: yaesu at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [Yaesu] (no subject)



Here we go again:

We liked it when our HF rigs started shrinking. The days of room-sized rigs
slowly became history. Now we could put the rig on the kitchen table. They
shrank some more so we could mount them in our space-cramped vehicles. 

In another vein, the race was on to improve on the Tuna Tin Xmitter. We
loaded up the Sucrets and Altoids tins with homebrew designs to get us on
the air with a hank of wire, a key and a AAA battery.

I am waiting patiently for my savings account to bear the cost of a new
FT857. Now I see the new '9000 and Icom 7800 coming up on the rig horizon; I
cannot help but wonder if do-it-all rigs are on their way to returning to
the room-size radios they started from.

Joe Guerra KD5CZM ARES EC Kleberg County TX

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