Galaxy radios is dead

To Point 2 in the post immediately above:

This is exactly why companies in the early 80s amateur market (e.g., Drake and Cubic) and the somewhat related Class D CB market (Stoner, CPI et al) lost sales to Asian manufacturers and ultimately exited their respective public consumer communications channels.

I have a number of examples of gear from that period. US-produced build quality was definitely better than the wares of, say, Kenwood, Icom and Uniden - but in terms of performance the latter was viewed as good enough. Thus, many radio aficionados voted with their wallets - and their feet.

Drake's case came straight from the horse's mouth - one of my friends/former coworkers was an engineer with the company throughout the 5 and 7 line time frame...then into market pullout and their focus shift into the ESR market.

Cubic's was similar. Stoner ultimately became SGC, and they folded a few years ago as well. Mostly due to similar dynamics in the maritime and land mobile markets.

SuperLid said:

Great plan. Have you listened to 10m in the past 10 years? There is more going on 11m, than 10. Besides, the majority of hams today, wouldn't know what to do with it.

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They could do like they do on 2 meters, where they have long discussions about their prostate exams and how much they enjoyed them. The difference is that skip on 10 meters would allow sharing their joy with folks all over the world instead of just their buddies tied to the local repeater network.

I would not agree that all USA made items where better. I was not born until the 1970's so all of the Japanese made items from that time onward where always top notch. It did not matter if it was hifi, audiophile gear or CB and Ham gear. I would say that design philosphies where different for sure. Most of the domisticly produced gear was often far older technology and topagraphy. Our semiconductors where until the 1980's also better in terms of durability but subsidized Japanese semiconductors flooded the market and we could not compete on price or chose not to!

Post WWII the USA was always very inovative but production costs, energy costs, taxes, and the lack of long term productive cottage industries was always an issue in the USA post WWII. Add to that absolutely stupid managment contract deals with Unions and that was the end of small production viability in the USA. The banking system in the USA is also a major player since you can not manufacture without access to low interst loans which leads back to domestic and foreign policy and all things political. While small business is the back bone of the USA ecconomy they are designed to in large part fail! Always plenty of lip service though from both parties in the USA just like plenty of lip service on "middle class" but I am a results guy not a "Hope and Change" guy not that it matters since there is little difference between either party once you get deeper than surface level!

In every catagory hifi, computers, phones, cars, trucks, knives you name it nothing I have owned that was the best was ever made in the USA except maybe some of my hand tools. The best I have ever owned was made in Japan or Europe. I can not think of any CB radio or export radio or ham radio I have ever owned or had the option to own was ever made in the USA. I do own some Ten-Tec stuff but it was never the best it was very good! Ten-Tec where too rigid and ideological to ever be the best. Henry was too expensive and limited in it's availablity to be the best in my book too elitest! I saw first hand all of the abuses by Unions and the corprution of the Unions and the politicians that they supported while working for General Motors. GM will always be trash because of the corperate culture of the company. Quality control is killing GM with a eath of 1000 paper cuts! Until it fixes it's corperate culture it can not win but it is so large politicians will not let it fail either so it's momentum keeps it going in spite of all of it's short commings!

We are finaly at the point that with automation the main things holding the USA back from manufacturing dominace again is energy cost, taxes, and red tape. Well at some point it would be nice to have a single payer health plan. Every American should have healthinsurance identical to Senators and Congressmen just for paying taxes but even at 50 I will be dead before I see that I am sure!

It is not sustainable to have medicines, electronics, appliances and almost all of our car parts outsourced to countries that we might be at hot war with not that far down the road!

Onelasttime said:

In every catagory hifi, computers, phones, cars, trucks, knives you name it nothing I have owned that was the best was ever made in the USA except maybe some of my hand tools. The best I have ever owned was made in Japan or Europe. I can not think of any CB radio or export radio or ham radio I have ever owned or had the option to own was ever made in the USA. I do own some Ten-Tec stuff but it was never the best it was very good! Ten-Tec where too rigid and ideological to ever be the best.

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Per the bolded:

Stoner. CPI. ARF. Those three were a cut above ANY Asian-made CB of the day in terms of receiver performance - although the Uniden AM/SSB chassis used in various high-end sets (Madison, 2000GTL) was a close second. Having owned or used all of them, the CPI and Stoner stuff remains in the lineup.

As far as Ten-Tec: Jack Burch's philosophy was that their offerings should emphasize CW performance above everything else. That they do. My current lineup includes Corsair IIs, Paragon IIs, an Omni V and an Omni VI/Opt 3. All of these could benefit from a 2.8KHz B/W SSB filter for general ragchewing but if the aim is contesting the 2.4KHz version works fine. On CW they excel. The only other rigs I have of that era which come close in terms of QSK performance are the Cubic Astros, specifically the 102BXA/103.

Going back further:

There are several sets of "twins" from the late 70s/very early 80s which I'll throw out for comparison purposes. Yaesu FR/FL-101, Kenwood TS-820S/R-820 and Drake TR-7/R-7. The Japanese transmitter/transceiver are hybrids while the Drake utilizes a solid state PA.

Pop the covers and it's evident which cost the most to produce. Drake's PCBs are glass epoxy while Yaesu's and Kenwoods are phenolic. All three wanted to charge you extra for filters. Drake and Yaesu wanted extra for a speech processor (standard in the TS-820S) while Drake also wanted to charge you for noise blankers (the TR-7 and R-7 used slightly different types).

In terms of RF performance, the Kenwoods came in a damn close second to the 7 lone but they did so at 2/3 of the price - maybe even lower. Yaesu's lineup offered a little more flexibility in terms of receiver modes and band coverage than the others but lacked basic interference-fighting options - even a Rejection Tuning control (such as seen on the FT-301 series) would have been helpful.

Given the price points, though, the JA gear manufacturers ultimately captured the market.

I have a lot of run-time with all the models I've mentioned along with a number of other sets of twins and transceivers. If a piece of gear isn't user serviceable I'm really not interested in owning it - especially if there are inherent design defects which may prove difficult (if not impossible) to fix. Drake, Cubic, Collins all produced equipment which was technician friendly. JA equipment was put together with the "good enough" service mentality, banking on the fact that many operators would upgrade and sell the gear long before major problems began to surface.

Oddly, the exact opposite was/is true in the automotive world - but that's a topic for another thread.