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From: wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin )
Newsgroups: net.analog
Subject: Re: Re: Electronics wearing out
Message-ID: <11346@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 28-Jun-85 10:23:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.11346
Posted: Fri Jun 28 10:23:54 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 2-Jul-85 06:09:53 EDT
References: <2663@decwrl.UUCP> <508@edison.UUCP>, <172@almsa-1> <221@unccvax.UUCP>
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>     Just out of curiosity, why on God's green earth would it be required
> to make three models of a general coverage receiver in the first place? 
> Wouldn't it be cheaper even still to have just one mask set for one lousy
> CPU, to go from 100 kc/s to 29.999 mc/s, avoiding the service/reprogramming
> issue entirely?
> 
> David Anthony

I certainly agree that having just one model would be better, and I wish
that were possible for Icom (and every other manufacturer).

If all the rest of the world were like the US, it would be. However, the
two variants I mentioned originally (German and Australian) are different
because of these reasons:

The Deutsche Bundespost has some asinine and offensive restrictions on
receivers, nominally meant to keep public-service & police, etc. 
transmissions private, and justified on the grounds of anti-terrorism
(ignoring the obvious fact that terrorists that can get illegal guns
and explosives can certainly get any electronics they want!). This 
means that "E-suffix" models ("E" for "European") of shortwave receivers
have to cut off their coverage at 26.1 MHz (or so) at the top end, for
German sales. (We had a net.ham-radio discussion about this a few months
ago, by the way.)

The Australian customs regulations charge a much higher duty on receivers
that tune below 2 MHz, probably to impose taxes on consumer radios that
cover the AM Broadcast Band. Cutting the coverage off at 2 MHz on those
saves the Australian customer quite a bit, and probably means that Icom
can sell a lot more radios in Australia than they otherwise would at the
higher price (which would just be income to Customs, not to Icom anyway).

These sorts of restrictions *should* be implemented with internal jumpers
that the consumer could cut to restore full coverage operation, not by
differently-programmed circuits or the like that are difficult for the
non-technical to overcome. That way the offensive government-imposed
restrictions can be bypassed, but the end-user does not have to suffer
their effects.

Regards,
Will Martin

ARPA/MILNET: wmartin@almsa-1.ARPA    UUCP/Usenet: seismo!brl-bmd!wmartin