Uniden & Radio Shack, What's The Deal?

Status
Not open for further replies.

SpectrumAnalyzer

Previously Banned Member
Banned
Joined
May 11, 2015
Messages
81
Anybody remember these two sorry a$$ radios?



Uniden's first foray into HF with the Bearcat DX-1000 was mediocre at best but Realistic was pumping out HF equipment since time began & their last effort the venerable DX-394 didn't even offer much needed squelch control, seems AOR is the only manufacturer that dare present a DC to daylight radio with a very small footprint in the AR8600MKII "basically I'm talking HF here though" anybody else here wish these two companies would delve back into the HF market now that they collectively could produce affordable high end quality HF equipment comparable to the present day oversize high end cost prohibitive HF equipment presently available now?

If nothing else AOR needs a little competition to bring the price of the AR8600MKII down.
 

Attachments

  • dx1000cs.jpg
    dx1000cs.jpg
    82.1 KB · Views: 1,788
  • UO21lrg.jpg
    UO21lrg.jpg
    83.6 KB · Views: 1,560
  • aor-ar-8600b.jpg
    aor-ar-8600b.jpg
    47.2 KB · Views: 1,629

bkantor

Member
Joined
Jan 22, 2002
Messages
280
Location
Bay Shore, NY
I was working at Radio Shack when the DX-394 first came out. Being the resident scanner/shortwave nut, I got to try out every radio so that I could sell them - I just couldn't like the 394. It was deaf, no matter how I hooked it up and ultimately steered customers away from the radio (much to my managers chagrin). But, sure saved a lot of returns. It still amazes me how much people will still pay on eBay for these.
 

n9mxq

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Dec 15, 2005
Messages
1,840
Location
Belvidere IL
You have to look at it like they do. How big is the market and how big of a share of that market can they reasonably expect to get?

Sure, there are those who'd love to see them come out with a new HF SWL radio. But would it be enough for the companies to profit?
 

SCPD

QRT
Joined
Feb 24, 2001
Messages
0
Location
Virginia
anybody else here wish these two companies would delve back into the HF market now that they collectively could produce affordable high end quality HF equipment comparable to the present day oversize high end cost prohibitive HF equipment presently available now?

Actually, no, Uniden has too many current problems to worry about HF. AOR make high-quality products... umm... well...
 

ka3jjz

Wiki Admin Emeritus
Joined
Jul 22, 2002
Messages
25,361
Location
Bowie, Md.
The SDR market has pretty much wiped out the desktops, sad to say....there are a couple of good ones that can be had for under the USD400 level that would beat the pants off those Uniden / RS dogs by a country mile...Mike
 

marksmith

Member
Joined
Jun 20, 2007
Messages
4,331
Location
Anne Arundel County, MD
The Chinese would blow them out of the market on both price and quality unfortunately.

With outfits like Tecsun pumping out radios that would probably outperform a new Uniden offering, they would never get a market. They would want to sell it with a huge margin also, so there would be few takers. Lately their quality control is for the birds anyway, so if they did come out with something, it might not work.

And in case you have not noticed, Radio Shack is belly up. They won't be doing any R&D on anything like this. They never made a lot of the stuff they sold anyway. They farmed a lot of it out and put their name on it in recent decades.

Mark
536/HP1e/HP2e/996P2/996XT/396XT/PSR800/PRO668/PRO652
 

lep

Member
Joined
Jan 15, 2002
Messages
948
The SDR market has pretty much wiped out the desktops, sad to say....there are a couple of good ones that can be had for under the USD400 level that would beat the pants off those Uniden / RS dogs by a country mile...Mike

It is not clear if the OP meant HF receivers or transceivers. SInce your username is an amateur radio call sign, do you mean scanners? Or, do you mean HF transceivers? If so, one of the best on the market is Elecraft which is all USA made. They exhibited their new syntheized model in Dayton and it is pictured in radio magazines current issues. The complete line-up with all accessories is about $9,000 with a 4 week waiting time for delivery.

If the meaning is HF receivers, hi-end commercial grade receivers (of the type rarely used by hobbyists) have always ranged more than $10-15 thousand dollars. I used to use them professionally in another context when I worked with a government Agency.
 

Citywide173

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Feb 18, 2005
Messages
2,151
Location
Attleboro, MA
It's pretty clear to me that the OP meant receivers. Otherwise he would have included transceivers in his examples, and probably wouldn't have singled out Uniden, Realistic and AOR (none of them are known for their vast number of HF transceiver models.)
 

ka3jjz

Wiki Admin Emeritus
Joined
Jul 22, 2002
Messages
25,361
Location
Bowie, Md.
It is not clear if the OP meant HF receivers or transceivers. SInce your username is an amateur radio call sign, do you mean scanners? Or, do you mean HF transceivers? If so, one of the best on the market is Elecraft which is all USA made. They exhibited their new syntheized model in Dayton and it is pictured in radio magazines current issues. The complete line-up with all accessories is about $9,000 with a 4 week waiting time for delivery.

If the meaning is HF receivers, hi-end commercial grade receivers (of the type rarely used by hobbyists) have always ranged more than $10-15 thousand dollars. I used to use them professionally in another context when I worked with a government Agency.

You're kidding, right? There are a great many SDRs on the market that cover HF that don't cost thousands of dollars. Start with the well-regarded Perseus (just under USD1000) and work your way down. The Elad FDM-S2 and CommRadio has been discussed in our SDR forum, and there are many others as well...see this article in our wiki

SDRs with HF Coverage - The RadioReference Wiki

These are all receivers - not scanners nor transceivers (we have a separate wiki for SDR ham transceivers - use the page links at the bottom of the above article if you're interested...and we have a separate forum for ham equipment...). Of course we're not talking about multi thousand dollar SDR performance either, but you get the idea.

This is an area the Chinese - who are really dominating the portables market these days - haven't gotten a toe hold in just yet. There are a few Euro manufacturers that are making a major statement in this market (the Perseus, Cross Country are but 2 examples). And I wouldn't ignore the Middle East either - the AFEDRI is made by an Isreali. Mike
 
Last edited:

ka3jjz

Wiki Admin Emeritus
Joined
Jul 22, 2002
Messages
25,361
Location
Bowie, Md.
And before someone mentions the RTL-SDR - that little stick, of Chinese manufacture (among others) - doesn't cover a whole lot of HF (depending on the model) without an upconverter - some of which are listed here

RTL-SDR - The RadioReference Wiki

AFAIK, the Chinese haven't broken into the Perseus / Quicksilver / WinRadio type of market - yet. I would expect, however, that they eventually will. Mike
 

zz0468

QRT
Banned
Joined
Feb 6, 2007
Messages
6,034
If the meaning is HF receivers, hi-end commercial grade receivers (of the type rarely used by hobbyists) have always ranged more than $10-15 thousand dollars.

And based on the performance of said receivers, that price tag was more than fair. You canfind all manner of high end receivers on eBay now for a fraction of that price. I paid $350 for a 70's vintage ITT MacKay receiver that blows everything else I've used out of the water.

I used to use them professionally in another context when I worked with a government Agency.

I'll bet you could get your favorite model, with just a little bit of luck and a bit more money.
 

zz0468

QRT
Banned
Joined
Feb 6, 2007
Messages
6,034
Uniden's first foray into HF with the Bearcat DX-1000 was mediocre at best...

I bought one of these back in 1984 or '85 when they first came out. Mediocre, sure, but it was actually a pretty good mediocre. There were two things I actively didn't like about it... It had a cheap, consumer grade feel to it, and the synthesizer made this 'tickety-pop tickety-pop' noise when you tuned across the bands. Once you stopped, it was nice and quiet, but tuning around was a nuisance.

I was into microwave system monitoring back then, and I used it to demultiplex the analog mux channels. The fact that it would receive down to about 30 KHz was perfect for that. It rarely saw an actual HF antenna, but for what it was, and what I used it for, I actually quite liked it.
 

lep

Member
Joined
Jan 15, 2002
Messages
948
And based on the performance of said receivers, that price tag was more than fair. You canfind all manner of high end receivers on eBay now for a fraction of that price. I paid $350 for a 70's vintage ITT MacKay receiver that blows everything else I've used out of the water.



I'll bet you could get your favorite model, with just a little bit of luck and a bit more money.

My favorite was a special model of a Watkins-Johnson. There may have been some released in surplus but I have not come across it yet either at the Dayton flea market or my last visit to Fair Radio sales.
 

parnass

AJ9S
Joined
Jan 13, 2003
Messages
166
Location
northern Illinois
.. I paid $350 for a 70's vintage ITT MacKay receiver that blows everything else I've used out of the water. .

I had an ITT Mackay Marine 3031A. What model did you have?

m3031a1.jpg


m3031a4.jpg
 

77Impala

Member
Joined
Feb 22, 2015
Messages
79
Location
Denison TX
Anybody remember these two sorry ... radios?

Could the problem have been the antenna used for reception? HF frequencies require a much longer antenna then most of these radios came with. I have found most HF/Shortwave radios to be very lacking with the cheap telescoping antenna provided by the manufacturer.

A few of the true HF antennas that I have seen were long wire type on a horizontal plane.
 

majoco

Stirrer
Joined
Dec 25, 2008
Messages
4,278
Location
New Zealand
Slightly OT but - what happens to all the radio gear from those ships that are being de-constructed in India, Korea and China?
I've managed to get a Debeg 7313 which is really a Danish Skanti R5000 - but there must be hundreds or more receivers out there somewhere.......
 

ka3jjz

Wiki Admin Emeritus
Joined
Jul 22, 2002
Messages
25,361
Location
Bowie, Md.
Could the problem have been the antenna used for reception? HF frequencies require a much longer antenna then most of these radios came with. I have found most HF/Shortwave radios to be very lacking with the cheap telescoping antenna provided by the manufacturer.

A few of the true HF antennas that I have seen were long wire type on a horizontal plane.

If only that were the case - then folks like Larry Magne and others that did reviews on radios in that era would have picked up on this. But, sad to say, the answer is no.

Oftentimes poor performance is a result of cost cutting and short cuts taken in the design of the radio itself. This is something an antenna - no matter how good - simply can't alleviate.

To bring this back to topic, there IS someone who works on the 394s and *supposedly* makes them a better radio . ..

LOWBANDER'S WEB PAGE

Even with these mods, a crummy radio remains a crummy radio....'nuff said...Mike
 

ratboy

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Nov 3, 2004
Messages
970
Location
Toledo,Ohio
I have had a couple of really cheap Sangean/RS and Tecsun portables, and all of them were/are better than the DX-394. I had a stock one, and a modded one, and both of them were....crummy, to be nice about it. I had a DX-1000 too, what a dog! Arf! There were so many problems with it, and almost none of them were fixable.
 

Boombox

Member
Joined
Sep 2, 2012
Messages
1,366
I had only one problem with the DX-394: after having it a couple years, the tuner would only tune in one direction. Several good shots of tuner cleaner down the side of the tuner shaft fixed the problem.

RE: original post: I doubt any company aside from the SDR manufacturers and Chinese portable manufacturers will come out with a new HF rig. Icom's produced the R-75 for how many years now? With no new model in all that time? Yaesu got out of the HF general coverage receiver market. I don't think Kenwood has one available, either.

Compared to the late 1990's when the DX-394 came out, there's very little on HF to listen to, and the market for a radio that does what even the DX-394 did is very, very small -- much smaller than it was when the DX-394 was produced.

The last few times I've tuned around the SWBC bands there's maybe a handful of stations at best.

Unless one is a ham, a SWL who is into tuning the ham bands, or you're into utilities (which means most of the time you're monitoring static in between transmissions -- there's not much market for that), there is no point in having an HF receiver anymore.
 

majoco

Stirrer
Joined
Dec 25, 2008
Messages
4,278
Location
New Zealand
there is no point in having an HF receiver anymore.

A very broad statement. I have 6 HF receivers driven from a multicoupler and an OCFD and I live in a country that is relatively isolated from big signals.In theory the lowest quality radio is a Kenwood R 2000 - but I find there is plenty to listen to in the broadcast, utility and 'weird' categories.

I have found many people who have tried to find something on the HF bands try to listen at the wrong times on the wrong frequencies, a badly calibrated radio and use a poor antenna - give them a little guidance and suddenly they understand why they have not heard anything and start to be more patient and tactical and actually enjoy themselves better - they get a good buzz when they pick up something unexpected.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top