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

Mon May 17 23:58:49 EDT 2004

At 07:15 18-05-04 +0700, Martin Sole wrote:
>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. 

This is an important point. I know you're talking about user-interface
issues, but consider this:
In v/uhf rigs, both mobile and hand-held, the trend has been to allow wider
and wider out-of-band RX, thus sacrificing immunity to intermod - the only
way to REALLY reduce intermod is with narrow front ends, and this requires
helical filters whose size can only be reduced to a certain finite minimum
and still expect them to work (think of the analogy of various undersized
HF antennas as opposed to a full quarter-wave). In HF rigs, I bet efficient
heat dissipation vs. fan noise and heatsink size put certain lower limits
on rig size too.
Another thing that I'm sure is of interest to at least a cross-section of
hams is the ability to maintain/repair rigs on your own, and while the use
of SMT components certainly allows more features/performance to be packed
into ever smaller packages, it is certainly not conducive to ease of
maintanence.
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 definitely concur with this, and I would add I like BIG displays, but I'd
be willing to bet that having more physical controls (and bigger displays)
is part of what drives the price of these rigs up. Also, think about the
increased maintanence overhead as the rigs with lot's of mechanical devices
(switches, potentiometers, and to a lesser extent, even optical encoders)
begin to age - and think about how easy it is to get at one of these
components for cleaning or replacement in these highly integrated, compact
rigs. I keep thinking about how complicated it is just to replace panel
lights in some of the solid-state rigs made before super-bright LEDs were
available. Off topic, I seem to recall there was a sports car made some
time back that required major dissassembly just to replace an oil filter.
>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. 

How about stamp collecting or bird-watching<GRIN>?
>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

73,
-avi 4X6UA