Will wideband commercial equipment flood the hamfests?

[W4CPT]

I sure hope to make it to Dayton this year as I did last but I can't help but wonder how the narrow banding law will affect what we see on the tables this year. I can't help but think we will see table after table of wide-band only commercial equipment that may or may not program down to Amateur radio frequencies. It should be a VHF lovers dream come true. Equipment that cost hundreds of dollars will now be offered for a few bucks. The trick will be to know your quarry and not buy up radios that cannot make the stretch to our frequencies. There will surly be a few sellers that will convince the unknowing that a certain radio only needs a little tweaking to work great on our bands. Remember that all the tweaking in the world will not help when the software will not accept the out-of-band frequency.  But then one can always find a use for that old boat anchor. Last year I saw a GE Ranger that cost someone well over one-thousand dollars being used as a scotch under a trailer tire.  Tell me what you expect to see this year.

[W8ATA]

I have noticed on www.govdeals.com, a service  that countless cities and counties subscribe to as a means of auctioning off surplus equipment, that already there are auctions offering wide band equipment. Hand helds and mobiles often sell as group lots and not individually which leads me to think they are being purchased for resale. On another note I have been informed that manufactures of two way equipment are buying back the old wideband radios and destroying them to keep them off the market. Having spent 30+ years in public administration I do know that government entities must sell surplus at auction and not in the flea market style. How does all my rambling relate to Dayton and other large hamfests? I have no idea. 

73,
Russ

[W6EM]

For years, Motorola trade-ins to Motorola shops were rumored to be sent to 'the grinder' and not resold.  And I remember having heard at least one story of a public safety entity having damaged the command boards of Motorola Spectra radios before they auctioned them.  (They didn't just remove boards, they actually drilled through the radio PC boards with an electric drill.)  So much for truth in advertising used radio equipment for sale at auction instead of characterizing them as electronic scrap or salvage.

If the radiosforsale thread on Yahoo is any indication, there will be boatloads of it.  And, unless its Kenwood or Vertex-Standard, unfortunately, you won't be able to afford the price of the software.

[AD4U]

Heck I remember when "they" went from 15KHz to 5KHz.  There was a lot of moaning and groaning and gnashing of teeth way back then.  When that happened there was a lot of 15KHz FM gear floating around, but VHF and UHF were not very popular in HAM radio.

Since I am an old timer and since I own 3 GE Mastr II repeaters and I maintain 2 more, I was kinda hoping some GE's would appear so I can stock up on some spare parts.  But so far I have not seen any.

I guess most of them were surplused and bought up when all the commercial radios went from crystal control to programmable 10 -15 years ago.

Dick  AD4U

[AA4PB]

It's not like the old days when all you had to do is plug in a new crystal and re-peak a few coils. Equipment in general (including most amateur transceivers) will be relegated to the scrap pile rather than ending up becoming a refurbished "boat anchor" like yesteryear's radios. Think what value that new $10,000 HF transceiver will have when the LCD panel fades away 

[WB6DGN]

It's not like the old days when all you had to do is plug in a new crystal and re-peak a few coils.

Boy!  Your old days were sure a lot easier than MY old days!  Very few radios that I encountered would tune down to the ham band without modification.  GE Progress line is a good example (and, also, one of the most popular radios to modify for ham use in my area.  Taking apart that RF preselector transformer and replacing the capacitors was a good half-day job for those with lots of experience; as much as several days for first-timers.  Transmitter would usually tune but that receiver evened things out.
Motorola TwinVs and Motracs were iffy.  Sometimes yes, sometimes no but there weren't too many hams that would pop for the price of a Motrac in those days.  I was lucky.   I had the "use" of a brand new UHF Motrac on the weekends but it had to be retuned and ready to go on its commercial frequency on Monday morning (I had the equipment and the license to make that legal).  Lots of good sounding radios in those days (unlike the rice boxes today) but they always knew when I had the Motrac on the repeater; the audio quality was distinctive (good).
Tom

[N0FPE]

Was at a hamfest today with a couple of "surplus" dealers on site. They had plenty of wideband equipment for sale. All at completely crazy prices. Most of it was in reasonable condition but asking $200 for an old Maxtrac is just silly. After talking to one of the dealers I had the feeling they think that people are going to flock to them to buy the old Motorola, Standard, Vertex, and Kenwood commercial stuff.....wonder if they want to buy a bridge?

[K1DA]

We cleaned up on the very good Kenwood TK's years ago.  100 watts on 6 fm for 50 bucks, UHF and UHF also available back then.  This is old news.