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Curious I wonder how many sales of Ham equipment goes for Out of band use.

jdobbs2001

Active Member
Mar 20, 2012
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With less people getting into Ham radio (New generation more interested in social media and video games) every sale counts. I wonder how much equipment sold is really for out of band use.

I have seen plenty of Amateur radio equipment doing duty as Marine HF, LMR(ie contractors,NGO firms) in places like Africa etc.. and of course 11 meter operators.

The reason for this is companies like Codan for example want to charge an arm and a leg for commercial HF transcievers and not everyone needs ALE. (There are work arounds to do ALE on non ALE capable radios anyhow)

even vendors offer up the mod as an option. (Dont remember that being the case 15 years ago) Honestly I think its silly to even TX lock the radios to begin with, if your licensed you know the band plans, and if new frequency ranges are opened you should not be stuck with what the radio shipped with (ie 60M band introduced in 2002)

SGC used to sell Transceivers fully capable of transmitting on the whole HF band to Ham radio operators.

what is your guess?
 

With less people getting into Ham radio (New generation more interested in social media and video games) every sale counts. I wonder how much equipment sold is really for out of band use.

I have seen plenty of Amateur radio equipment doing duty as Marine HF, LMR(ie contractors,NGO firms) in places like Africa etc.. and of course 11 meter operators.

The reason for this is companies like Codan for example want to charge an arm and a leg for commercial HF transcievers and not everyone needs ALE. (There are work arounds to do ALE on non ALE capable radios anyhow)

even vendors offer up the mod as an option. (Dont remember that being the case 15 years ago) Honestly I think its silly to even TX lock the radios to begin with, if your licensed you know the band plans, and if new frequency ranges are opened you should not be stuck with what the radio shipped with (ie 60M band introduced in 2002)

SGC used to sell Transceivers fully capable of transmitting on the whole HF band to Ham radio operators.

what is your guess?
Two years after I got my Ham ticket in '08, it was announced on national television that Ham radio as a whole had never had so many new licencees in its entire history. So, I think you might want to re-check your facts and sources again.

The reason that Ham radio equipment is expensive - IMO - is because Ham radio appeals to engineers, retirees, and hobbyists who have the expendable cash that don't want to buy a new Corvette.

Let me know when Ham Radio Outlet goes out of business . . .

Just about all Ham radios can be modded to go out of band, since MARS operator do so with gov't permission. But how many Amateurs do so for using it on CB is actually quite low. Many of them know how to modify their radios if it was deemed necessary to do so for emergency use.
 
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All but a handfull of my locals use HF sets on ch19.

we have been using HF sets on 11mtrs ssb since the plate & load days when we had to swap our own crystals & realign the oscillators in ft200's ftdx500's or stick a screwdriver in the swan 500cx to move down,

my ts830s has 11mtrs installed from new by the shop that sold it,
back then it was all a bit secret squirrel,
the shops would do it if you were in the circle but they would not admit it,
i would do it for friends,

HF on cb became more common when solid state rigs like ft301 ft707 ft7/7b came out, we still had to swap rocks & realign,

it took off when ts430 & ft757 came out & none techie folk could open their own rigs up,
nowadays any of the dealers will wideband your new or used radio for a small fee,

on average my cb friends have better radios than my amateur friends and they swap & change them far more frequently,
within 10 miles of me we have everything from from an old 706mk2g to a ts-990s battleship on ch19.

Robb

The only reason there are so many licences here is because they give foundation licenses to anybody that wants one, its almost impossible to fail,

one club will even help you cheat, another will make sure you pass if your face fits,

most of the foundation license holders round here sit on ch19, they are not real amateurs by a long stretch and never will be.
 
The reason that Ham radio equipment is expensive - IMO - is because Ham radio appeals to engineers, retirees, and hobbyists who have the expendable cash that don't want to buy a new Corvette.
That is no joke about the cost. My first three radios were older used radios. My next two purchases, one was a customer return due to weird problem(IC-7100 shut down) and the next one was ordered by a customer that had mods done and then chickened when the price was too high.(Yaesu FT-857) I had the company tech include in writing all of the modifications done and how to reverse them.(CB & Mars)
The last two were the "New ones" so to speak.
 
years ago you had to have a valid call to get this done. now they leave it up to the buyer to follow the rules lol
 
Well back in the early 70's I started getting 101's, 2020's tempo ones in the shop for repair along with the good ole Siltronix 1011's even had old Hammarlund and other HF gear was being used heavily back in the hay days they would drag old Thunderbolts into the shop and say can I use this on my CB. Yea the ham gear was used on 11 for many years and there were hams back then that loaded them up on 11 meters as well I know because I was there with them when they did it. I myself ran a Tempo one or Yaesu ft-200 on the workbench. I used to fire the tempo up at 6 AM every morning and talk to a couple of guys in South Africa off the stacked PDLII's 60' feet in the air before my young bench techs came to work.

BIGCB73TEMPO.JPG
 
Hello All: Back I the 1980's I had a good friend who worked for Yaesu Radio in Los Angles some were. He said that they believed that 30 percent of their HF Radios went to other than the Ham Radio Market. A large majority of the 30% of radios going to the CB Single Side Band crowd.

As we all know these Yaesu HF Radios having better receivers and a 100 watts with a speech processor you normally didn't need a linear amplifier to talk all over. And there were CB SSB type clubs all over and it was very enjoyable to join in all the people on the CB SSB channels. Being able to have a high quality crystal filters in the radios with a Attenuator and a Beam Antenna, allowed you be able to reduce normal skip noise to a acceptable level, while being able to listen to the locals bad mouth you. And the normal bleed over from local stations was significantly reduced.

The VFO controlled Ham Radios allowed you to tune all over the bands, and get to listen in on the Ham crowd, and using these Ham HF Radios induced many a CB'er to get his Ham License. These Ham HF radios also allowed one to tune below and above the CB Bands hearing the locals on their "secret pirate channel" frequency that nobody else could go to, or so they thought, very entraining tho.

Jay in the Great Mojave Desert
 
then again i dont see cbers spending that much for a ham cb radio
if they are only using it on 11 meters and a little free band.
hope they dont get stupid and talk on the ham bands without a license.
 
Yeah there were a lot of the CB'ers who had big HF Radios, big linear amplifiers, big towers and big beams. The Ham type HF Radios allowed them to tune all over the bands listening in and then wanting to join in. Yep they bootlegged using made up call signs and joined in. The favorite was "HNL" has no license. Wayne Green the publisher of 73 Magazine told of his experience's bootlegging on the HF Bands, and how it helped him get his ham license.

This bootlegged operation got most of them there Ham License and they even got into Ham Radio even more. Its a pretty common practice.

CB SSB in the ol days was on CH 16 which was 20Kc above CH15 (27.135Mc), CH16 was 27.155, and the big boys could slide down to 27.150, or 27.145, or even 27.140 Mc. Oh the days of being a sophisticated station that could slid down to another frequency and being a "Big Strap"

Then the 40 channel CB Band came out and CH36 thru Ch40 was used mostly for SSB. And the free band above CH40 was also used some what. But not a big deal as once thought. I am thinking that with the 40 channel CB Band expansion there was a peak in the ham type HF Radios being sold for CB SSB use.

Jay in the Great Mojave Desert
 
Before I went ham I ran an ICOM 720a on 11 meters, mostly on LSB 27.605 and the lower side of 37. Traded that rig for an Yaesu FT-102 which I fixed up and sold off(still sorry I did that).
 
Some may Brag on bootlegging on the Amateur Bands, but it doesn't take long to figure them out.
Today's INSTANT access to every callsign database on-line, makes it tough to get by.
Many groups will have someone on board who when a callsign is given that is not normally part of the group, will instantly look-it up on one or several of the databases and check the validity of the callsign.
Then the're are some obvious give away's...someone trying to join a phone conversation by saying CQ or QSK or comment...etc... are almost always dead give-away's!
(by US rules those are unidentified transmissions)...
I normally will respond, "what's the callsign"...if not given they will be ignored!
The chronic Qsl'ers...... "What's your personal".
Now granted old habit's die hard and some new legitimate op's will use these terms, and to a point with many groups I frequent, we will make allowances in this regard for a time.
However if it continues over the course of a few days or weeks one joins a group in conversation, someone(not normally me) will call them out on it.
Now that's not to say we don't welcome new op's...To contrary, we welcome them daily!...
Most op's just expect over time that these old habit's, by listening and chatting with a given group tend to fade away gracefully.
I have caught a few over the years using the're Father's/Uncle's etc...callsign that may not be active on the air presently but when checked and find out that callsign has been assigned 50 years ago...it is not tough to figure out it does not belong to whom is using it.
So just a head's up if your so inclined to try and bootleg on 75/40 and 20m you most generally will be found out quickly.
Many Stateside op's and Dx'ers worldwide will instantly plug a given callsign in the logging program tied to the many databases before they even respond to a call.
All the Best
Gary
 
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