So 1982 34 years ago the AR series came out. I remember the AR3500 but I am not sure if it was the first or if te AR3300 came out first.
So 34 years ago you could get 26Mhz-32Mhz with doing any of the crazy programming stuff to get wider. As I recall though you could easily get them on 12m. You could get it in 30w and 120w versions. You could get it with audio compression. You had continuous tuning none of this absolutely stupid band selection nonsense tied to 40 or 60 channel blocks. Individual control for each digit so no limits on how you adjusted the freq.. The transistors for the pre driver, driver and final no matter what the output where name brand bipolar transistors designed for RF.
Fast forward 34 years and what do we have? Not much more in some ways a lot less.
Receive is terrible due to small cheap overly wide crystal filters. Power is not much better since the first 100 watts is the biggest bang for your buck. The models today that still have bipolar transistors (only in an amp slapped onto the bottom of the chassis) have absolutely terrible cheap low beta bipolars and they tend to generate an insane amount of 3rd order harmonics. If you test them with out the 4 transistor amp they give a nice clean signal. Most export radio's today force you to go through long seemingly endless menu's to adjust things. They limit how you can access and tune the radio to where you want to be. Few shops are actually qualified and equipped to properly work on smd radio's. Most force you to use bands with channels in the 40-60 count per band. None of them have DSP, Clipping, Compression, receive noise is insane today the worst I can recall in my 43 years on this earth. Most of the chassis sizes are too large to be used in most modern vehicles that are not Chevy Full Size Trucks or SUV's. When you do get a small chassis they kill it with cheap flimsy controls that have too many functions and a really bad menu driven control interface.
So how do we as customers get the OEM's to listen? A radio from 18, 25, 34 years ago should not still be the best radio!!! SSB radio's with good crystal filtering should be the standard not mission impossible. Receive that has good filtering should be the standard. There is no limit on FCC type D radio's that says they can not have DSP, Clipping and Compression! There is nothing saying that the freq. response passed through the audio chain has to be as flat and dead sounding as it is. You do need more bandwidth and their is no reason you have to have harmonics either to have a few more freq.'s from human speech pass the audio chain. Better filtering and more sensitive receive and better rejection is good for the hobby.
I am not against free banding or for free banding and I am not for against the use of illegal power. I just think that as people as customers that spend money on a hobby we should have more voice. Instead I feel like this is 1950's Automotive Detroit and their are only 3 players in town and you will buy what ever we push out the door only with CB's and Export radio's. The CB market is terrible I do not think you can buy a decent FCC Type D radio at any price that is really a decent radio especially from Cobra and Uniden the SSB radio's have so much noise in them I do not know how anyone can use them with out having their ears bleed! The best ones are from Galaxy but even they drift so bad on SSB your like a dog chasing it's own tail!
If anyone comes up with a way to shoe horn a huge crystal filter into some of these newer nosier radio's do let me know!!
As much money as we spend on radio's and things to support the radio I think we should have more voice with the OEM's. I have never tried to actively have a group of hobbyist contact an oem in large number's to attempt to guide product development. If anyone knows how to go about this I would love to know. I do not think one or two random emails will get anyone's attention. I am getting tired of just being forced to buy what companies are pushing out the door. I am tired of fighting on ebay for vintage gear to use and to have as parts donors to keep old gear alive because the new gear sucks! I do not care if it is an export radio or a CB I just want loud clean audio on AM and SSB. I want sensitive quite receive with decent fidelity. I want rock solid SSB stability. Oh and controls that do not feel like a cheap Chinese Dollar Store plastic squirt gun!
Anyone intersted in attempting to get the attention of Uniden, Cobra, RCI, President??? I deal with parts OEM's out of Taiwan that make high end parts for me not related to electronics or radio at all. They are always eager to design new things, modify existing parts, upgrade materials etc....usually my cost is little for what is being done that I sometimes feel guilty like I am taking advantage of them. I do low volume custom made one of's for a lot of customer's. I know Taiwan is not mainland China but I have to imagine that some of these changes would be easy for them to make and even if a small aux board had to be added I doubt it would significantly add to the cost. One of the reasons companies like China is because they are very flexible in this regard. I have no connections in China now that I am not in automotive world.
So idea's welcome especially if you have had some measure of success with something like this in the past.
So 34 years ago you could get 26Mhz-32Mhz with doing any of the crazy programming stuff to get wider. As I recall though you could easily get them on 12m. You could get it in 30w and 120w versions. You could get it with audio compression. You had continuous tuning none of this absolutely stupid band selection nonsense tied to 40 or 60 channel blocks. Individual control for each digit so no limits on how you adjusted the freq.. The transistors for the pre driver, driver and final no matter what the output where name brand bipolar transistors designed for RF.
Fast forward 34 years and what do we have? Not much more in some ways a lot less.
Receive is terrible due to small cheap overly wide crystal filters. Power is not much better since the first 100 watts is the biggest bang for your buck. The models today that still have bipolar transistors (only in an amp slapped onto the bottom of the chassis) have absolutely terrible cheap low beta bipolars and they tend to generate an insane amount of 3rd order harmonics. If you test them with out the 4 transistor amp they give a nice clean signal. Most export radio's today force you to go through long seemingly endless menu's to adjust things. They limit how you can access and tune the radio to where you want to be. Few shops are actually qualified and equipped to properly work on smd radio's. Most force you to use bands with channels in the 40-60 count per band. None of them have DSP, Clipping, Compression, receive noise is insane today the worst I can recall in my 43 years on this earth. Most of the chassis sizes are too large to be used in most modern vehicles that are not Chevy Full Size Trucks or SUV's. When you do get a small chassis they kill it with cheap flimsy controls that have too many functions and a really bad menu driven control interface.
So how do we as customers get the OEM's to listen? A radio from 18, 25, 34 years ago should not still be the best radio!!! SSB radio's with good crystal filtering should be the standard not mission impossible. Receive that has good filtering should be the standard. There is no limit on FCC type D radio's that says they can not have DSP, Clipping and Compression! There is nothing saying that the freq. response passed through the audio chain has to be as flat and dead sounding as it is. You do need more bandwidth and their is no reason you have to have harmonics either to have a few more freq.'s from human speech pass the audio chain. Better filtering and more sensitive receive and better rejection is good for the hobby.
I am not against free banding or for free banding and I am not for against the use of illegal power. I just think that as people as customers that spend money on a hobby we should have more voice. Instead I feel like this is 1950's Automotive Detroit and their are only 3 players in town and you will buy what ever we push out the door only with CB's and Export radio's. The CB market is terrible I do not think you can buy a decent FCC Type D radio at any price that is really a decent radio especially from Cobra and Uniden the SSB radio's have so much noise in them I do not know how anyone can use them with out having their ears bleed! The best ones are from Galaxy but even they drift so bad on SSB your like a dog chasing it's own tail!
If anyone comes up with a way to shoe horn a huge crystal filter into some of these newer nosier radio's do let me know!!
As much money as we spend on radio's and things to support the radio I think we should have more voice with the OEM's. I have never tried to actively have a group of hobbyist contact an oem in large number's to attempt to guide product development. If anyone knows how to go about this I would love to know. I do not think one or two random emails will get anyone's attention. I am getting tired of just being forced to buy what companies are pushing out the door. I am tired of fighting on ebay for vintage gear to use and to have as parts donors to keep old gear alive because the new gear sucks! I do not care if it is an export radio or a CB I just want loud clean audio on AM and SSB. I want sensitive quite receive with decent fidelity. I want rock solid SSB stability. Oh and controls that do not feel like a cheap Chinese Dollar Store plastic squirt gun!
Anyone intersted in attempting to get the attention of Uniden, Cobra, RCI, President??? I deal with parts OEM's out of Taiwan that make high end parts for me not related to electronics or radio at all. They are always eager to design new things, modify existing parts, upgrade materials etc....usually my cost is little for what is being done that I sometimes feel guilty like I am taking advantage of them. I do low volume custom made one of's for a lot of customer's. I know Taiwan is not mainland China but I have to imagine that some of these changes would be easy for them to make and even if a small aux board had to be added I doubt it would significantly add to the cost. One of the reasons companies like China is because they are very flexible in this regard. I have no connections in China now that I am not in automotive world.
So idea's welcome especially if you have had some measure of success with something like this in the past.
