Well said!
That's why I roll my own homebrew gear and own Heathkits and an Omni-V!
Vy 73, AI2Q, Alex in Kennebunk, Maine
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-tentec@contesting.com [mailto:owner-tentec@contesting.com]On
> Behalf Of AL_LORONA@HP-USA-om33.om.hp.com
> Sent: Monday, August 23, 1999 1:42 PM
> To: tentec@contesting.com
> Subject: [TenTec] The Last Radios
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Hi, Everybody,
>
>
> Reading about the various fixes that Ten Tec owners apply to their
> radios always gets me thinking: The current Ten Tec rigs in
> production-- which would include the Scout, Omni VI+, and kits-- may
> be the last radios which are user-serviceable. That is, we
> are moving
> into an era where transceivers, either because of surface mount
> construction or because of the increasing role of software,
> or due to
> other reasons, may no longer lend themselves to the kind of
> troubleshooting, repair, modification, experimentation, and
> alignment
> that so many of us value and enjoy.
>
> Evidence: The top-of-the-line Kenwood transceiver belonging to a
> friend of mine developed VCO problems within a month of his
> buying it.
> To extract and repair the board, which was loaded with nothing but
> tiny, unmarked surface mount devices, took him weeks to do. (Kenwood
> would not replace it under warranty, but that's another
> story.) It's a
> good thing that my friend is an electronics engineer with 20
> years of
> experience building satellites at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and felt
> confident enough to tackle the job, isn't it?
>
> Evidence: I just read a newsgroup message from a ham whose
> Icom IC-730
> went on the fritz. He was soliciting help from other hams. The
> shocking answer was that the internal battery went dead,
> which sounds
> like it would be an easy fix, except that the rig's firmware was
> stored in *volatile* RAM which was lost forever with the battery
> failure! I guess Icom figured no one would still be using their
> IC-730s in the late 1990's; the "throw-away" rig concept. This poor
> guy is hosed if he can't find a way to re-load the program into his
> few-year-old transceiver.
>
> Evidence: How many mods for the Kachina/Pegasus do you think we are
> likely to see in the next few years? How much experimentation with
> filtering, keying, front end, audio, aftermarket components,
> etc., so
> much of which you see on this reflector? Will all of the
> modification
> involve software only? (Way cool, how did you get the S-meter on the
> lower left of your front panel? Oh, I just wrote, compiled,
> and linked
> a new GUI...)
>
> Hang on to those Omnis, everybody, we may be witnessing the final
> phase of a fix-it-with-a-paper-clip-and-chewing-gum approach to
> amateur radio which has proved so rewarding for so many of us.
>
> What say you?
>
>
>
> Al W6LX
>
>
>
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>
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