Bravo to the TenTec Omni VII, Orion II, Icom 7800 & Yaesu 9000. They are
the last of the dinosaurs of this generation. They are in the same
position as the Johnson's, National's, Hallicrafter's, Hammarlund's and
others the day before Collins introduced the S line, way back when. I've
been looking at the Software Defined Radios. The SDR 1000 transceiver
looks good..."
Wow, that's quite a sanctimonious and back-handed compliment if I ever heard
one. The SDR-1000 may very likely become a "dinosaur" sooner than you
think.
The SDR-1000 certainly produces some good performance numbers, but much of
the impressive high-signal handling performance comes at the expense of
mediocre MDS. Refer to the ARRL's last lab report and witness that the
SDR-1000 missed their published MDS specification by 10dB -- and that's
using their preferred low-noise M-Audio Delta sound card.
History has shown that radios without a good user interface (e.g., real
knobs and displays) are adopted by a small set of users. I suspect the vast
majority of the buying population does not want to "kluge" a radio system
together from a handful of computer components. I've been there, and I'm
done with it. The SDR-1000 has been available for some time, and while it
is going through an evolutionary process, I suspect their sales growth is
increasing, but at a decelerating rate.
Paul, W9AC
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