On 8/30/05, Donald Chester <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >Really? You are breaking this radio into parts and then selling it? > > >From my experience on working on a few of the things back in the early 80's, > that's about all they are good for. I still have bald spots from all the > hair I pulled out while trying to troubleshoot various FTDX rigs and their > little cousin, the Tempo One. > > Vacuum tubes on pc boards = Intermittent pops, noise and flaky operation. > Pure crap. > > Those things had to represent about the lowest point ever in the quality of > commercially built equipment.
I like ya Brian, but have to agree with Don and others on this one. Having reworked (reworked = made work consistently) one of these for a newbie ham in the mid-90s, my advice to him was to sell it to ASAP because it was an accident/nightmare waiting to happen. The outside cleaned up pretty well, inside had that dingy, stinky, cheap 60s TV set appearance to it. It even smelled like an old TV. Must be something to do with those sweep tubes...and circuit boards, and cheap parts, and... He did manage to get $75 for it at a hamfest from a collector. I had found a decent KWM-2 for him and he was thrilled with it. The 'hybrid' approach of mixing tube temps and circuit boards was never a good one IMHO. It helped lead to the demise of the two 11 meter giants Browning and Tram next door in NH, who made very nice hand-wired, stamped chassis CB and business band gear in the 60s and early 70s, but couldn't make a clean jump to the newer technology. Of course, $800 to $1K for a CB radio probably didn't help, either. The early Yaesu rigs and Tempos make a good case for the radio paperweight or curiosity. But if you look back at history, they did the same thing with their cars. Early Subaru, Datsun, Toyota and so on were major POS vehicles for the most part, but over time they were able to bring up the level of quality after they copied, stole, or invented improvements. Today's Yaecomwoods show the same lineage. Encapsulated it in perspex, Brian. Then advertise it as a rare salesman's sample! de Todd/'Boomer' KA1KAQ
