The AM Forum

I couldn't name from memory the model number of a single Icom, Yaesu or Kenwood on the market to-day, if my life depended on it.  But I have a catalogue from a major equipment dealer here in front of me (they sent it to me because I mail-ordered $30 worth of antenna hardware from them a few months ago), and I see they have an Icom IC-7800 listed for $10,599.99.

I think I'll go out right away and buy two of them. :D  :D

The IC-7800 has been out for the last two years. Even heard two on AM. Who said AM'ers don't have money.
The more recent Yaesu FTDX9000MP is only $12399.

(http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/hamhf/9000mp.jpg)

Of course, some people paid 5 to 10K for a Hallicrafters SX-88 and upwards to 20K or more for KW-1 or $600 for a Johnson Ranger.

Some call it "appliance" and some call it "functionally" and some call it "nuts".

The IC-R9500 wide-band surveillance receiver (only) advertised in QST the last 2 months will be somewhere between $13,500 to maybe $17,000 here.

What makes a receiver worth $17,000?

Pete said:
I call it having more money than brains!!!!

for that kind of money I wound not buy a radio with paper circuit cards and go directly to Harris or Cubic and buy a real mil radio.
Somehow a radio complinant to a mil spec carries a bit more weight than a radio
in the back of QST with bogus specs.

I tell you I've felt bad when I've spent several hundred dollars for my Yaesu FT-897D (and the receiver is noisier than noisy), and $1500 back in the 90s for the FT-736R VHF & UHF multi-band all mode I used to own. $10,000 plus? - you' ve gotta be kidding!  Especially with my bills!  And the funny thing is that both the IC-7800, and FT-9000 aren't considered to be absoloutly the best.  Most hams that know about them, and have had a chance to use them, say there are better rigs performancewise, for far less.  Also the FT-9000 has a bit of a reputation as a lemon.  When it came out a year ago, there were a boatload of problems with it, leading to recalls.  In some cases, hams had to send in their FT-9000 two or three times to Yaesu-Vertex service to have problems fixed, and they never were completely fixed!  I wouldn't be surpised if the new FT-2000 (which is in many ways a far better rig) wasn't released as damage control for Yaesu's reputation (which with it's vaunted reputation for "customer no-service" is already bad enough).

73,
Ellen - AF9J

The prestige of owning the world's most expensive reciever, of course.....

I own a rx that cost $16,800 more than yours.... that make ME better....

Back in the early 80s' when I ran the service dep't of a local commercial two-way radio business that also was a dealership for Yaesu and a couple of other ham appliance manufacturers, Yaesu had no factory warranty repair service.  Customers had to send the appliance back to the dealer where they bought it.  The dealer was not reimbursed for the warranty service performed.  All Yaesu would do was to send replacement parts at no cost to the dealer, and provide telephone technical support to our service dep't (me) that was uncannily similar to the telephone "customer support" now provided by PC manufacturers - including the long waiting-on-hold times.  So, with even one warranty repair job on a Yaesu amateur transceiver, our company was already losing money on the sale.

Not only was the dealership lukewarm at the prospect of servicing the equipment free of charge to repair deficiencies built into the appliance is it came from the factory, the customer was at the mercy of the competence of whatever repair technician the dealer could or would hire to perform the service, in whatever repair facility and with whatever test equipment the dealer was willing to invest in.

We did a lot of secondary warranty repair work sent to us by dealerships all over the country that were lacking in their own repair facilities.  Of course, we charged those business the same full service fee that we would charge a customer who brought in an out-of-warrany radio, and the process added a week or so to the turn-around time for the customer.

Amateur radio equipment sales were extremely marginal at best.  The markup was scarcely more than our company's shipping costs for the radio.  Hams have always been a cheap lot, and we had to compete with the big mail order houses.  The  ham radio end of the business mainly provided name recognition and kept our foot in the door with the major manufacturers.  The real money maker was the commercial two-way branch of the operation.  When the FCC discontinued the commercial radiotelephone licence requirement for installing and servicing "land mobile" equipment, small town police and fire departments immediately began to purchase their radios by mail order and let the on-staff CB'ers do the installations. Any other repair work was simply sent back to the factory, so our two-way business quickly collapsed and the company went out of business.  I was glad I was just a lowly employee on the payroll, and not a business partner in the company.

I understand that Yaesu eventually modified their warranty policy so that they would reimburse the dealer, or take the radio in for factory service if the dealer could not immediately solve the problem locally, but that was a day late and a dollar short for us.

WHAT WOULD MAKE REALLLLY HAPPY:
To have an enjoyable QSO with a Rx that cost $17000 Less than yours.
Lets have a contest to see who can put together the CHEAPEST usable (100watt minimum) AM, CW or SSB HF setup.
the rules:
You can build it out of ur junkbox-homebrew is good,Dumpster diving encouraged
If it is an out right purchase--no math is allowed--you cannot buy a whole estate, E-bay everything else and call your leftover GK 500 & R-390A freebies.
You must work at least 5 AMFone subscribers with the stuff.
You must post your costs and brag about them on the air,  so we can forever harass you if you list the stuff on E-bay later on--------------Skip

Got my SX-88 for $40 and my CE 100V for $50. They were found curbside (for heavy trash pickup) at two different times, by 2 hams(1 a policeman and the other, a trash collector) who had no interest in keeping and repairing them. Both pieces are now an active part of my station. But, I'll let you know when and if I throw them up on Ebay.

Rule #3
Past conquests don't count
 :)

Not sure why the question is being asked now. The Collins KW-1 sold for something like $3000 in the early 50's. That amount is equivalent to around $23,000 in today's dollars. The 7800 seems inexpensive by comparison.

I have found a great radio doesn't need all those weird knobs and toys.
You put it on frequency select a mode and bandwidth and maybe AGC speed and you are done except for speaker volume. All that other crap is to make up for poor design.

I will tell you this.  My 30 year old TS-820, and 35 year old Swan 270B sound better on transmit audio, and are quieter on receive than my FT-897D with DSP!  Nowadays,it seems like you're paying more for bells & whistles, than anything else. And I will say this, my FT-897D is my 2nd menu/software driven DSP radio.  I'm keeping it for now, but when I get the money, it goes bye-bye.  I'm tired of radios that are defined by software.  Being in a 2nd story apartment, I occasionally have stray RF floating around, in spite of using an MFJ artificial ground, and a current choke I wound over 20 years ago, next to the feed from my rigs.  Of course what's happened? - the CPU in my previous DSP rig (an ICOM IC-703 Plus) glitched out numerous times, requiring CPU resets each time (wiping out all of my stored settings, grrrrrrr), and my FT-897D will hang up if I try to use computer control for the digital modes (ugh!).  I've had it with them.  DSP is a band-aid for mediocre receiver design.

73,
Ellen - AF9J

Skipper,
              Count me in, I'm game!! I'd look forward to it!!
                                                                                         The Slab Bacon

Anyone who uses a store bought receiver is not a real ham. They ALL have bells and whistles.

signed,

Crotchety Old Fart


 ::)

Perhaps, but not everybody has a workshop with drill presses, bend breaks, and band saws, to make their own rigs from scratch.

73,
Ellen, the apartment dweller - AF9J

Exactly. Thanks for making my point. A radio is what it is irrespective of its price tag. Trying to assign "goodness" or "badness" based on the price, number of knobs, buttons, menus, DSPs, whistles, bells or wind chimes is silly. Each radio should be judged on its technical and operational merits. And, of course, none of this accounts for the end user's tastes or preferences.

I agree Steve,

But what I'm saying is that many of these ultra expensive rigs really aren't hot enough performancewise, to justify their price tags.  It seems like you're paying for features more than anything else.  Yes, I know that adjusted for inflation they're cheaper than some rigs from 40 or 50 years ago.  Still, all too often it seems like the hype is in the price.  Yeah, I guess if you have the cash, and want to spend it on an 11 or 12K rig, more power to you. To me, it just seems wasteful I guess, since there is no quantum increase in performance from spending the extra money on one of them.   It's not like you're buying the next best thing to a milspec Harris communications system.

73,
Ellen - AF9J

I'm sure you are correct about some radios. Most everything sold is hyped to some extent. I don't find much useful in panning radios one has never even touched, let alone used (I don't think you are doing that, but others seem to be).

In 1980 when I moved back to this QTH, I had my homebrew junkbox station and a dipole about 25' high, strung between trees.  I decided right away to invest in a tower, and I already had on hand a big roll of bare soft-drawn copper wire, enough for a 160m vertical radial system. 

I bought new tower sections and hardware, except for guy wire insulators and base insulator, which I acquired NOS from military surplus or used from a broadcast station. The whole thing cost me a grand total of about $1600, plus a lot of hard physical work, blood, sweat and tears during a brutal, scorching hot summer.

After I completed the construction of the tower and antenna, I still had the junkbox transmitter and decades-old receiver, but I was getting excellent signal reports from all over north America and in a few foreign countries.

At the time, the amount of money I spent on the tower and antenna system was about equal to the price of a top-of-the-line appliance from Japan. I could have used the money to purchase said appliance, and would have had a shiny new radio with loads of bells and whistles, but the signal would still have been mediocre due to the marginal antenna that I always had to re-erect after each wind storm.

To-day, I still have the tower and antenna system, still in good condition and working perfectly.  My signal reports tell me so.  If I had chosen to use that money to buy the Japanese appliance what would I have to show for it to-day?  An obsolete radio (if it even still worked because some irreplaceable proprietary manufactured component hadn't crapped out by now), worth practically nothing on the used market, and a mediocre signal from that 25' high dipole strung between trees.

I think I made the better choice for the only substantial monetary investment I ever made in my life for ham radio equipment.

Lets add a new twist to the competition--a claiming rule, just like in stock car racing. $500? is this too high?
We could also make several categories--
complete station
xmtr only
rcvr only
This might be more realistic, as it is tough to home brew a Rx, but scrounging xmtr parts, or ratted out hulks that can be rebuilt is much easier
what do you think Frank??
I think this could be fun--the goal is to foster some HB activity and encourage, as well as prove, that a "cheap date" is often the best!!

Thatz pretty kool!! I like it! The $500 claim rule would help keep people from trying to buy their way to the top!

HB tx only each contact = 1 point
HB rx only each contact = 1 point if regen rx, 2 points if HB superhet
HB rx & tx each contact = 2 points and 3 points respectively

HB amplifier adds another point an additional multiplier!
HB microfonium adds extra 3 point multiplier!!
And last but not least 1 additional point if running HB "outboard slicer" or eating pickled eggplant whle operating!!

Hmmmmm............................ "73 and good luck in the corntest"!!

                                               The Slab Bacon

How many more time are you going to change the rules? Every time I get close to 'claiming' victory....  ::)

I had it sewn up with the antique shop $50 KW-1 and $50 75A-4 until you made the first rule change, assuming my original purchase price of the gear before selling a couple of items (like the complete Elmac station for $50 at the 1991 spring Deerfield) I've even worked the quota of amfone members many times over. Can I claim the T-368D given to me by W1DEC recently?  ;)

My interpretation of Skip's challenge here is that you don't have to pay a lot of money for nice gear, big gear, etc. Look at the new rigs given away as door prizes at hamfests and the like. There are plenty of deals to be had that don't involve ripping someone off or robbing a bank to fund it. They oftentimes require getting off the computer and out into the world, however. Having the packrat gene always helps.

Now THAT I can dig.  Here's an idea - make it 2 or 3 classes:

1.  Homebrew.
2.  Station consisting of manufactured gear: money spent on it - under $150
3.  Station consisting of manufactured gear: money spent on it - under $500

NOTE: on manufactured gear, you can rebuild it and/or mod it BUT, thet beceoms a part of the cost/money spent on it.

73,
Ellen - AF9J
Slaving away at work

Or we could just get on the air and talk like normal people. Yea, yea, I know that's a stretch.

HI HI OM :P

'Normal people'? AMers? I think that's a bit more than a stretch....

Ahh it was just a thought. :)  No big deal for me one way or the other.

73,
Ellen - AF9J

My homebrew RX only has 96 db of dynamic range the only big ticket item is the KVG roofing filter at $120 but there must have been 1000 hours building and rebuilding it.

 

I like the claiming rule aspect.....
Rig can be purchased for cost of construction claimed by contestant or set amount, dependant upon class after the minimum 5 contacts are completed. This might be a way to get some new op's interested in AM on the air quickly without having them go through the teething pains of buying parts or rigs on epay, only to be either swindled or buy the wrong components. That way they can learn on a rig that didn't cost much and have the valuable resource of asking the person who built it questions about its operation. Also, op's who are more experienced get a chance to do what they love doing best, an excuse to build!
This is appliciable to all types of rigs, class e, tube, restoring junkers etc...

Just a thought.

Mike, 2ZE

Maybe some of the new upgrades have money.I still use my Icom 735 as my non hollow state rig....Lee,N2UDF