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?
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?