On Sun, Aug 03, 2008 at 05:29:45PM -0400, Ron Notarius W3WN wrote:
> Now... if someone was to make the investment for a production run of, say,
> 100,000 or so 222 MHz FM HT's for use in the North American market (and
> anywhere else where amateurs have access to the 222 MHz band)... and it
> would have to be a decent unit that could pass FCC/IC type acceptance, etc.,
> let's not get bogged down in the details... and could afford to profitably
> sell those units at, say, US$79 each (plus tax & s/h, natch)... do you think
> the amateur radio market would buy enough of these radios to "boot strap"
> interest in 222? (Obviously, you'd have to encourage some repeaters to go
> up in some areas... and other infracstructure and so on... again, I'm being
> very general here)
If you look back to our discussion where I proposed a basic 20m SSB rig,
all of the arguments against it hold here too. As for construction costs,
a 20m SSB rig, of "rag chew" quality can be retooled from a cheap CB,
while a contest quality 222 rig can't.
If someone could make a 222 FM rig for $79, they would have long since
done it for 2m, where they could sell a lot more. Here the FRS band
is 446 mHz, and the radios sell all over the place, for example in Home
Center and Office Depot. How many of them have found their way to the U.S.?
Geoff.
--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com N3OWJ/4X1GM
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