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Reviews For: NCG Company 7/21/50

Category: QRP Radios (5 watts or less)

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Review Summary For : NCG Company 7/21/50
Reviews: 7MSRP:
Description:
Triband transceiver with built-in power supply
Product is in production
More Info:
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0074.6
W1AMX Rating: 2017-07-11
Solid performer! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Bought mine at a flea market back in 1995. Lucky to get original box, manual and both power cables. First contact was mobile on 40 meters, driving home that day into a Hamstick. Got 569 from station couple hundred miles from me. Said rig had great audio and wouldn't believe my 10 watts. Many contacts on all three bands since and continues to be a solid performer. A KEEPER!! If you find one, get it.
KG4YMC Rating: 2016-11-15
good radio , but Time Owned: more than 12 months.
radio has been a fine radio. but lately the dial cord had broken off. I got the radio from an eastae sale and has worked great up until this point. a friend of mind is trying to fix the cord, but it is buried inder circuit boards and were the dial pully is looks like a cover is welded or solidered? he did find an owners manual for it while I have used the radio for ten years or more it has been great, and will still be if can get freq dial cord linkage fixed. will still give it a 5 if anyone has worked on this radio again . please call me at 850 674 2225. glad I didn't take it to play in ga. would cost a fortune to fix mabey by the time they get to the dam cord.

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Earlier 5-star review posted by KG4YMC on 2015-09-22

just an update. in 20l5. radio is still doing great. tec. it is not qrp . will do ten watts , its what its rated at . depending on bands. I get reports. some say cannot belive it is onely ten watts. I use a w8 version of the g5rv and mfj mobile tunner. works good yet on l5 and 40. will make contacts ok on six . great receiver. no, it doesn't have the bells and whilstles. if turn down gain and increase audio setting works pretty good for pulling out weak stations. nice no thrills radio . and way built, will be around for awaile.
RADIOWEENIE Rating: 2007-04-06
Excellent Radio Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I had one of the NCG 7/21/50 radios with 3 dipoles in the attic. Radio worked flawlessly. The receiver is as good as any i have ever used. Unfortunately, my then "significant other" decided to sell all my NCG radios out from under me. The Stwertniks have always been extremely helpful and accommodating. I have bought many things from NCG/Comet and look forward to more business with them in the future.
VR2XMQ Rating: 2004-05-23
Good Radio Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
Special thanks go to Rod, KH7L for helping find one in very good condition.

It has great audio on RX/TX and the RX is a hot one on 6 meters. I love this radio!

Heart in the right place. It is my second favorite (only second to National Panasonic RJX661).

Thanks again Rod!
KH7L Rating: 2003-12-20
Great tri-band base rig Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
These are the 3 most popular bands in Japan. It has the same bands as the TYP HT-750. 10 watts output and comes with a built-in CW filter. It is not state-of-the-Art equipment but works great as a back-up rig. I often just flip the switch to check 6 meters or 40 meters NVIS. Has a nice solid sound to it.
G4VSQ Rating: 2001-04-02
Great fun and practical too Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
Thanks to Caity (KU4QD) who helped me greatly, I managed to buy one of these sets in late 2000 from eBay. I collect and use esoteric and unusual Ham and broadcast radios and this one is certainly unusual.

You can see Caity's review for all the background details about the radio. Note that although the radio has a built in power supply, it operates from 117 Volts. I'm in the UK where we use 240 Volts AC, so I had to use my Voltage converter to power the internal PSU. I soon gave up doing this and ran the set from my 13.8 Volts bench power supply instead. Current draw is low, especially compared to some modern sets.

The NCG 7/21/50 wasn't imported into the UK as far as I know, so it's certainly unusual!

The set itself has a very substantial feel to it and is very easy to use. The receiver is fair to good, but does sufffer from overloading on 40m at night here in Europe, where we have much higher signal levels than in the USA. Unfortunately, there is NO attenuator to help with this problem. I also noted some breakthrough from broadcast stations on 21 MHz.

Transmitted audio is very good indeed and CW keying has a good shape. I found the set gave me 12 Watts out on 7 MHz, 9 Watts out on 21 MHz and about 8 Watts out on 50 MHz. It's nominally 10 Watts, all bands.I managed to work ZS (South Africa) on 6m with just the 8 Watts on SSB, and so far have worked about 80 countries on 40m and 15m.

The radio has been reliable so far and I really enjoy using it. It's quite large for relatively few bands but looks nice in the shack. I'd recommend one if you like this mid-80's style. The lack of features is more than made up for by character and simplicity of use.
KU4QD Rating: 2000-04-12
Outstanding on the base, not for portable operatio Time Owned: unknown months.
The NCG Company, best known for importing Comet antennas, also imported this little gem in the mid to late 1980's. It was manufactured for the Japanese Novice market by National Radio (a/k/a Matsushita or Panasonic).

The rig is about the size of Kenwood's QRP rigs, such as the TS-120V and TS-130V, but it includes a built in power supply. Even if you look at today's tiny radios, like the SGC-2020, by the time you add a power supply you are up to the size of this rig, so it is still a small box even today for QRP base operations, and is great to pack up and go work with somewhere for the traveler, but it consumes far too much power for battery operated, portable work and it's too big and heavy for carrying along out in the field. It will operate either on 12V DC or 110V AC.

The rig covers 6, 15, and 40 meters only, SSB and CW, with a maximum output power of 10 watts. The 7/21/50 has an outstanding receiver and a more than adequate SSB filter. The CW filter is an audio filter, so it's not as narrow as it could be. The transmit and receive audio quality is excellent, and reports I receive indicates the rig has lots of "punch", which actually makes it possible to get into the middle of pileups, even with 10 watts and a wire antenna. An LED ALC indicator is provided for proper adjustment of mic. gain. The rig has a delta-F (RIT) control, and a pretty effective noise blanker, but no other tools for fighting QRM, so for base use you might want to add a good DSP. It also has no capacity for working split.

Construction of the rig is very solid, and mine has never failed in 13 years. It has no microprocessor, and should be easy to maintain thanks to the lack of many proprietary parts. The blue flourescent display, typical of Kenwoods of the same era, is bright, clear, and dead-on accurate, and the rig is extremely stable. The 7/21/50 only covers 50-51 mhz on 6 meters, which is fine since the rest of the band is FM and RC anyway.

If you are looking for a solid, unusual, simple base QRP rig, and like the three bands provided, the NCG 7/21/50 is a good choice. If you want bells and whistles, or something very portable, it's not for you.