I wish the guy who makes  this radio would also bring out a SSB version(tx).

Another alternative would be  ham version of the  military HF manpack, that runs 20 watts on SSB.

However a portable SSB radio  that puts out 50 watts would be nice.

The radio would have the following features.

A built in switch mode power supply and DC to DC converter that will operate on DC voltage from 10 volts to 50 volts.
A AC power supply that operates from 90 to 260 volts.
50 watts of output power when operated on AC or DC
A low power mode that enables battery operation of upto 20 watts.
A optional battery pack
A built in L network tuner that will tune anything including an end fed long wire
The transmitter should have good IMD performance so when driving any amp it  is clean.

I suppose Tentec could do something like this with its Eagle. However most of the ham companies seem to do very little product research they are on their own planets. QRP/Portable operation is very popular and the market is served by products that do not serve the purpose very well.

This kind of radio that I describe would be a "suitcase"station that can be carried anywhere in the world and even onto a plane as hand luggage.
QRP is just lot  of hard work that achieve very little. We need MINIMUM COMMUNICATIONS POWER and this would be 50 watts.

So to the HB1A folks do something like this and I am sure you will be the next Elecraft!

Well you may have those views about exporting. But let me tell you the ham radio industry are living in their own little world worrying about online fraud.  I deal with many other USA online companies and NONE have these silly policies like ham radio companies regarding online transactions. I have never been asked to XEROX my drivers license, credit card bill and  provide a full private dossier on my life to  buy more valuable goods online.

DXENGINEERING is a professional online  company like  Amazon and the many hundreds of online companies who deal with overseas customers daily without the "siege"mentality and negative hostility towards customers who want to give them money. While I can understand peoples need to protect themselves from credit card fraud etc, the banking credit cards system is international and its their job to do the vetting and catching. Insulting your customers by treating your customers like criminals because of your biased perceived notions is not good business practice.

Anyway I am happy with DXENGINEERING, I can order quickly and would be happy to spend my entire ham budget with them. I used to deal with HRO a lot but they  have unleashed the same BS of penalizing people who buy from overseas. No other  online shopping industry sector has these archaic BS policies that ham radio companies have when dealing with overseas companies. I buy watches from the USA well over 5000 dollars  and I can complete a online transaction in 3 minutes with no problems! Some companies wont ship a miserable Heil microphone overseas with all their BS procedures, which is entirely BS copied from other dealers in the ham industry

Anyway DX engineering's success speaks for itself, you know you dealing with professionals who know what international trading is all about.
They also know that if you live in Western 1st world country  that there is no issues with credit with fraud and stuff going missing because of theft in the post. That kinda thing does not happen in modern countries. YES WE ALL KNOW WHAT COUNTRIES TO AVOID!!!!!!   and I dont blame any company for not dealing or sending goods to these countries.

Anyway for ham radio DXENGINEERING is THE company to deal with for overseas orders. Other may choose not to do so and thats fine.

I posted this somewhere else and I can agree with the others about DXENGINEERING.


Yeah DXENGINEERING sets the standards for online order processing. I order a ton of stuff through them from overseas. Their online order processing is the best in the world and their freight charging system just excellent. DXENGINEERING IS THE BEST period.

I get sick and tired of being treated like a terrorist by US companies who think that anyone outside of the USA that uses a credit card is a criminal wanting to rip them off, especially when you from  modern western country  that has  very strict fraud laws.  What is staggering is the number of US ham radio order companies that still want to do their own credit card verification outside of what the credit card companies demand and even treat Paypal like  a petty thief's tool of choice. It takes one telephone call to any credit card company for verification and 1 minute on the printer for a overseas order without extra charges.  Other companies could learn a lot from the DXENGINEERING business model.

I just  think that most ham radio companies are just too lazy  bothering about  making money, but they good at griping about how slim margins are! These companies are running their ham radio businesses like a corner store from 50 years ago. Where are these corner stores now?  They have all disappeared! They all gone with the wind because they just sat on their rear ends and expected people to throw money at them.

Anyway, along comes a professional modern business like DXENGINEERING and  guess what, none of these small minded issues. Why can DXENGINEERING process orders without all this BS. DXENGINEERING is  to ham radio what AMAZON is to the book market. Companies like DXENGINEERING set the standard. I just wish DXENGINEERING would increase their range of ham radio products  so I can order more. Companies who treat the "world as their oyster"will prosper,  others who think that they can survive on CONUS sales will die and blow away. We live in a global village.

DXENGINEERING are marketing experts and their web page would make a good case study for marketing lessons at  business  school.
They also deserve a medal  for one of the most clean easy too  use web pages that I have come across.

Anyway DXENGINEERING is my online ham radio super online candy store with no equal and who has set the standard for the best customer support.
   

I agree

W8JI is one  of the great technical gurus  in ham radio.

 There are many silent experts out there who think they good but are unwilling to put their money where their mouth is. Tom publishes information that can be peer reviewed, yet we get a lot of these big mouth know everything experts wanting to be critical about every little mistake he makes just so they can try  and shoot him down.

What is amusing is that Tom clearly states that his web pages are there to be peer reviewed, yet  the so called ""experts"" who are always critical of Tom never actually email or correct or add to his excellent web page resource to make it better.  What is also amusing is that many of these so called experts are supposed to be  expert engineers who have been trained in the process of peer review. There is not one science profession that does not subject its members to this process of peer review and publishing review, yet all we ever get from the internet big mouth experts is hot air and wanting to pick endless fights. They can never give references for the basis of their arguments yet Toms information is their for all too see, and if you ask he will steer you to the right reference texts. Its  easy going through life being negative nit picker  and deliver nothing to  making ham radio better.

If all these other negative big mouth  experts put together a web page that can peer reviewed I will have some respect for them. However you cant find their web pages can you now?

There also some other web pages like GM3SEK and VK1OD both which are excellent technical references, there may be others. However
W8JI, GM3SEK, W9CF and VK1OD are promoting our understanding of the science of ham radio. These guys are not the big mouth internet google experts that you hear on the air  talking dribble day in day out. 

It is such relief coming off 40 meters listening to garbage all day about peoples ham radio shopping lists, and then going to Toms web page for brain food. These days on ham radio you judged to be experts by the amount of time you spend on google doing research on what you  have bought for your ham station and what you are going to buy in the future. Yup these are the "technical" heroes  of the new hams, the shopping experts! If you buy all the right things for your station and can rattle off shopping web pages all day you an expert!

We need people like Tom writing and reviewing the ARRL Handbook, there is not a year that goes  by and we see the same technical nonsense and errors published in the ARRL handbook every Year. I wish Tom would write a book  like the  now defunct Radio Handbook, it certainly would make a great reference.

Besides anyone who can build station like Tom deserves a lot of praise. I look forward to hearing his curtain on the air one day.

Without guys like Tom in our ranks we just going to become a bunch of CBérs very fast. This is already happening with the ham radio shopping experts.

Tom is a ham radio technical super hero!

Yeah DXENGINEERING set the standards for online order processing. I order a ton of stuff through them from overseas. Their online order processing is the best in the world and their freight charging system just excellent. DXENGINEERING IS THE BEST period.

I get sick and tired of being treated like a terrorist by US companies who think that anyone outside of the USA that uses a credit card is a criminal wanting to rip them off, especially when you from  modern western country  that has  very strict fraud laws.  What is staggering is the number of US ham radio order companies that still want to do their own credit card verification outside of what the credit card companies demand and even treat Paypal like  a petty thief's tool of choice. It takes one telephone call to any credit card company for verification and 1 minute on the printer for a overseas order without extra charges.  Other companies could learn a lot from the DXENGINEERING business model.

I just  think that most ham radio companies are just too lazy  bothering about  making money, but they good at griping about how slim margins are! These companies are running their ham radio businesses like a corner store from 50 years ago. Where are these corner stores now?  They have all disappeared! They all gone with the wind because they just sat on their rear ends and expected people to throw money at them.

Anyway, along comes a professional modern business like DXENGINEERING and  guess what, none of these small minded issues. Why can DXENGINEERING process orders without all this BS. DXENGINEERING is  to ham radio what AMAZON is to the book market. Companies like DXENGINEERING set the standard. I just wish DXENGINEERING would increase their range of ham radio products  so I can order more. Companies who treat the "world as their oyster"will prosper,  others who think that they can survive on CONUS sales will die and blow away. We live in a global village.

DXENGINEERING are marketing experts and their web page would make a good case study for marketing lessons at  business  school.
They also deserve a medal  for one of the most clean easy too  use web pages that I have come across.

Anyway DXENGINEERING is my online ham radio super online candy store with no equal and who has set the standard for the best customer support.

Anything works for the FMT test,,,,, you just need to put some time into your methodology. Just read the ARRL's FMT results web page, there is a wide range of equipment being used from cheap yaesu's to any old boatanchors.

Neither the K3 or Flex5000 have implemented their external frequency locking options. Even when this option does become available there will still be inherent errors within these radios that will have to be accounted for. Having an external frequency standard lock seems to be waste of money on  typical ham radio equipment like the Flex and K3. It might be worth the investment on a R&S or RFSPACE SDR-IP receivers which can achieve super accuracy in the real world with absolute certainty.  The Icom IC7800 has an frequency error  when externally locked. At least when you  frequency lock a piece of Agilent equipment it is locked and accurate, not so with ham radio equipment.

Well when QST or Rob Sherwood reviews the ADAT and confirms its performance I will buy one.

I will not invest such a large sum of money into a radio that  might have a limited future. While ADAT's business practices are indeed their own business, it begs the question why anyone would want spend such a large amount of money for  a "taste"of what the future offers? I am not about too invest my money in a secret Swiss society that offers no real information on their products to the wider ham market. If this is some hams grand homebrew project with few sales on the side that enables his company to fund his research so be it. The bottom line is that you cant expect  people with limited resources to buy into such a product.

I also find it disturbing that someone only is dabbling around in business and not taking the marketing  of its products very seriously. This give me little faith in the company and its products. If I had  a Ferrari like product I would certainly be promoting that fact  not  coming up with excuses for my business failings. When a company has a dead web page with no real information or updates that makes it a dead company with a dead product. The Hilberling radio was promoted this way for years and where is that product now?

I will still buy an ADAT when I see the company  becomes serious about marketing and releasing information on its product. In the meantime I will go read the R&S catalog for technology radio  dreams, the R&S catalog is free!

This is a fantastic development. Finally someone  who actually understands that  building a ham radio transceiver on a PC platform is a stone age concept. 

This SDR Cube  concept is the right one for the future. If Flexradio did the same thing their products would be a runaway success. Unfortunately the flex groupies like riding around on a horse and cart when hamming when they could be speeding around the track on a Ferrari using just such an embedded solution.

An embedded control integrated control system for ham transceiver without  the MS bloat ware and latency will be the final remake  of the SDR concept for hams. This is the first company that has pulled this off. The first company that releases an embedded version of the Flex5000 will be selling  a very popular transceiver.

Lets hope more companies come up with SDR  products like the Cube Transceiver using  high performance embedded hardware. Micro controllers are  cheap readily available these days, there's absolutely no need to use a stone age PC and dinosaur MS bloatware.  The folks behind SDR Cube are certainly smart forward thinking people, they certainly understand that  the vast majority of hams like playing with  knobs. A SDR box with knobs will  have very wide market appeal.

I wish them well, lets hope that they bring out a top of the range transceiver that blows everything away. A  large color screen, 200 watt FET PA and all embedded  hardware in one box will be a big hit. Maybe this company will wake Flexradio up from their drunken PC/Windoz stupor.

Why would you want to sink so much effort and money into something with no support or guarantee?

You learn very little from plugging modules into a bus! You might as well buy a Flexradio or an ADAT, pull it apart and put it together again. At least
at the end of the day you will still have something worth some money.

The only way you will ever learn something about DSP radios is if you write the DSP code yourself.

While the ambitions of HPSDR is grand, its really for those with lots of surplus dollars and time.

I agree, the Eham web page navigation  around the site is perfect. The ARRL's new web site is the worst  web that I have ever visited ever. Its like trying to find the end of a piece of spaghetti  in a bowl of spaghetti. Whats even worst is that its own search engine cant even find important sections of their own web page. Try and find "product reviews"  or additional files from QST articles! Its just about  impossible too find anything the index  is so useless. You can clearly see  that a "committee" designed the ARRL's web page rather than someone with with clear and practical thinking that places a high priority on what people want from the web page. As someone else commented, its first priority is too be in your face selling you something regardless of what  you really want to do on the web page.

The RSGB web page is another example of a clean web page where its easy to find your way in and out of.

A KISS web page like Eham is popular because it puts the most popular aspects of the web page right in front of you where you can
grab or read it immediately. Its almost a instant snapshot of everything thats happening in ham radio on one page.

 As someone one said, if you cant explain what you trying to do in one page or in one  paragraph, you either dont really know what you are about or what it is that you want to explain, you are confused yourself. The ARRL's web page does not know what it wants to be.

I am ready for the HOA contesting class.

I have a  10kw autotune HF amplifier sitting in the basement. This and  a ATTIC G5RV should give me a good chance!

I am considering buying a penthouse apartment overlooking seawater thats 100ft high for contesting. This is a HOA apartment block. With the 10kw amplifier and indoor G5RV up at 100ft  it should give me a few trophies. What do you think?

My wife has suggested that I buy the apartment below me since it has a clear shot towards Europe. She said i could fit a 5 element yagi in the lounge room that can fire towards Europe with a clear shot. This should make me competitive with the 5X5X5X5 stack stations.
I just did a TA(terrain analysis) and the antenna would be competitive if stuck the 3 front elements out over balcony. She likes the idea since we would not have too fly to our  remote contest station on the  island and avoid the heat, humidity and mosquitoes.

The HOA sounds like a interesting and competitive class. When will it start, I am ready. I already have some ideas for a two vertical phased array  for 160 meter night operation. I can sneak it out just on grayline. It should be dynamite over seawater. I foresee that I will be a dominant HOA category station for a long time!

I am also planning on a remote receiving station location. The Plasma TV noise is S9+20db, it drops down to a nice S8 at 3am. I think
S&P QSO's  will build my score fast allowing me too surf between all the switch mode power supply birdies.

HOA contesting will have its challenges, I like a challenge!

Move to the 3rd world.

Most 3rd world countries dont behave like Nazi fascist states. If you do want to work out the most democratic list of countries in the world, just apply for a 70ft tower permit in each of the countries that your interested in. You will find that in most 3rd world undemocratic states it will take you less than 30 minutes with no permit required. You wont have neighbors bitching about how poor you are, what car you drive, your house color and if your farting will contaminate the neighborhoods kids with evil thoughts

The word democracy as applied in our so called western democratic countries has no meaning  in a modern society. We ruled by little Hitlers and unfortunately every one of your neighbors think that its their democratic god given right to tell you how you should run your life. Worst is that they think they can tell you  what you can and cannot  do with your own private property. A third world communist dictator would be very proud of rules like the CC&R rules, its a form of collective communism. Isn't  that what communism is? The society telling you how and what you should be doing with your life and property? Is this the USA,,,, LOL!! OMG bring back Stalin and Saddam Hussein  I would have more freedom and less trouble in my life with them as democratic leaders.

The USA was supposed to be a beacon and guiding light for  the rest world on how government  and democracy should work and behave.
How did Americans the greatest free nation on the earth allow this  to happen to their society and government? You should all move too OH land, I heard that that they so free over there that they can put up 300 foot towers with rotating 160 meter  yagis.

Maybe Amnesty international  should use tower laws as a new test of how democratic and free a nation is!

Try and find a ICOM IC735. Its a very solid and reliable radio that will meet all your requirements.
It has a reasonable receiver and a decent transmitter. The IC735 was one of the best and most reliable radios that Icom ever built.

I used one of these radios on a Sailboat that went around the world. When I moved back onto land I used it for many more years.
I did another cruise across two oceans and the IC735 worked very well, unlike my Icom type approved marine radio which had several faults
and corrosion problems.

I still have the IC735 and use it on my test bench.  I am still impressed with this little box.

The TS120S and TS130s are very good radios, however I would be hesitant about buying one. The mechanical band switches on most of them that I have seen are basically close to being worn out.

Thanks for the Link,,,,

Impressive bang for the buck. Ten Tec must be congratulated for producing such a  good receiver.

All we need now  from Tec Tec is a transmitter with equally impressive IMD performance. Maybe the Eagle MK2 will such a
transmitter. I could not use a Radio with such poor transmitter IMD in my station.

Regardless congratulations Tec Tec.

I was surprised that the SO239  and power connector was not an option on the Eagle!

Having a noise blanker as a option sucks. Not having  the considered basic feature set needed for everyday operation makes it a terrible choice.
While I agree with Tentec and its philosophy for producing a  new low price high performance, the way they have designed  the Eagle is  just
awkward. Why cant they produce a radio like the TS480 with the DSP architecture?

The radio is rather lacking in terms of its feature set and   its transmitter IMD  specifications  look    horrible. I dont envision this radio at a
multi multi contest station despite its claimed receiver performance.

This radio reminds me of  a  CB radio, we have the Eagle and I am waiting for the President Washington, Lincoln and Bush. Maybe even an Obama model. Will Ten Tec  be releasing a Silver Eagle mic for the Eagle?

Jokes aside I will wait till Sherwood tests the radio, its asking price might be the greatest bargain in amateur radio even with the optional noise blanker! It might make a great dxpedition contest radio.