Long ago Jack Burchfield designed the Scout to be "his" radio.
He wanted a simple radio to use mobile and portable.
Making the latest greatest radio on the planet was not part of the goal,
although the Jones filter (at the time) was innovative.
The Scout was indeed a very simple radio and is still sought after on the
used market.
About a dozen years later, the Orion had just announced and Jack and I were
discussing the successor for the OM 6. Why was he discussing with me?
Because I had just launched his new Central European Distributorship:
Appello (here in Germany).
My opinion was, we needed a bare bones radio, single RX, ham-band only (no
General Coverage 'GC'), and its front end should be crunch-proof for the EU
market. It should incorporate the excellent DSP filters of the Orion.
Jack agreed that this would be the right radio for the two of us but he
thought it was not what Joe Ham wanted. It lacked bells and whistles,
specifically the GC receiver and a Bandscope. He thought that made better
business sense. The radio that followed was the OM7.
In 2010, Jack contacted me and told me he was sending me "my" radio. He had
built the radio I asked for several years earlier; the Eagle. Well if only
the S-meter had been a little larger, it would have been my radio - hi.
Simple, straight forward good performing radio.
TODAY: Things have changed a lot. With modern SDR technology, it is easy
and cheap to build a radio with very good performance. It seems most hams
want even more features than they did a dozen years ago. ICOM has proven it
can be done with the 7300. I guess the street price now is only $1300 or
$1400.
IMO, Ten-Tec has no chance to chase the market of full-features radio for
Joe Ham.
There is opportunity for a high-end O3 type of product and there is market
for a high performing, simple radio in the spirit of the Scout, and then
Eagle. Let's call it Eagle II.
What should Eagle II look like?
IMO Yaesu has the mobile market wrapped up with their tiny 100w all hf band
transceivers. But their transmitters are dirty, key click spectrum bad, and
nobody over 50 would want to use something like that for home use.
So I don't think it should be the goal of the Eagle II to be a tiny radio.
Nor should it have all the features of the 7300. It must be a great
performer but at as low of entry level price as possible.
My Opinion:
o Larger Cabinet - Omni 7 size is about right
o Slightly larger display but don't mess it up with hundreds of tidbits of
information. Make frequency readout and S-meter large.
o No built-in Bandscope or Panadapter
o Facilitate easy connection to an external Panadapter by bringing both the
9 MHz IF signal,
and the RX signal (after passing through the ham-band LPFs) to the back
panel. These are both options for the original Eagle. There are plenty of
proven solutions for connecting to this.
o Larger S-Meter
o Larger Knobs
o Dedicated PTT and AMP Key jacks on the back panel - NOT a DIN jack.
o AMP KEY must have hang time added to it (and all amp timing optimized)
o Separate inputs for Paddle and Hand Key
o ATU optional (I have only ever used mine when operating portable - I use
Model 238B when at home because I also have an amp). Don't make people pay
for things they will never use.
o Noise Blanker - not sure whether it should be standard or optional. If
one never plans to go mobile, why pay for it? In the interest of keeping
Entry Level price low, make it optional.
o At least one more filter slot
o "2nd RX Ready" - either as internal slot or Jack for external box
LIKE ELECRAFT with its K3(S), the options not used by everyone should be an
extra cost option. Without noise blanker and ATU, the entry level cost is a
good $200 lower.
It must have the famous T-T QSK, and nice clean audio on TX and RX.
So, that's my idea.
WHO's NEXT ?
73
Rick, DJ0IP
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