On Feb 7, 10:42�am, Art Clemons wrote:

�I suspect that there
presently isn't a ham equivalent of a Lister
engine and unless somebody
builds one, there won't be.

Take a look at

www.elecraft.com

particularly the K2 and K3 transceivers.

Besides for ham radio, such rigs would need
spare parts and some place to work on them.
�A spare radio would still be a
better choice than one that can be fixed in
five hours when time is of
concern.

Of course!

But the point is to be able to use what's available.

Of course if you can find or design a kit
that's functional,
reliable and has easy to acquire
spare parts, I'ld like to try building one.

See the above reference. Thousands of Elecraft rigs have been built and
used, with a minimum of tools and test equipment.

One other point, making rigs simple
often amounts to having to limit what
frequencies are covered. �It doesn't do
much good to have let's say an 80M
cw rig if contacts are more likely on
40M, or that's where people can hear
you.

Of course. But there's also the opposite extreme, where it is expected
that one rig will do everything.

�The Icom MKIIG and Yaesu FT-857
are relatively small, relatively
reliable, run on 12 volts and are relatively
simple to operate. �I have a
TS50 for HF, but it's getting really long
in the tooth, not sure I'ld want
it as my sole rig in an emergency. �

All good rigs but how reliable are they really? And how fixable?

One trend I see in Amateur Radio, which IMHO isn't a good one, is the
idea that ham rigs are like consumer electronics, with a useful life of
maybe a decade, and "no user-serviceable parts inside".

For an emergency, I would prefer one of
them especially if I had several.

Having several of anything is good planning in an emergency. But it's
also expensive!

�Switching power supplies are relatively
tolerant of voltage variations produced by
generators so they could be used
to power such rigs assuming you have
fuel available for a genset. �

IMHO a better option is rigs that can run from a variety of energy
sources so that you aren't tied to a genset or auto electrical system.

Finally, maybe we're both ignoring the
possibility that the best approach
would be complicated rigs that diagnosed
their own problems and indicated
which module to replace or repair. �Given
a collection of the modules most
likely to fail, that would be the real ideal choice.

The problem is that the complexity required to do that can reduce the
overall reliability...

I know the following is a blue-sky fantasy, but here's what I'd like to
see.

In the world of PCs, there are lots of standards which have evolved
over time and been adopted by many different manufacturers. The result
is that you can assemble, upgrade or repair most PCs made in the past
15 years or so with just a screwdriver.

Wouldn't it be great if ham rigs were built the same way?

73 de Jim, N2EY