First licenced in 1985, I bought an FT101Z, then a FT101ZD, these along with other bits I donated to a school radio club, around 1990, when I went QRT on HF.
A friend sold me his TS430s around 2000, which I traded in for a FT897D, a few years later.
The 897 is still in daily use mainly on CW and FT8, I also have a FT950, which is used on 40m, 80m, 20m, 6m, SSB / CW.
No old radios gathering dust here !!
DAVID G0FVH.
Still got me old TRIO TS-120V (yet to reach the doctors for repairs)
and an TRIO TH-751E again needs go to docs for check up and realiment
One day
Karl
A tangental thought to the topic: There are a huge number of old and new model V/UHF rigs in circulation, many hams have more than one of them, just on the first two pages of this monthās Radcom, ML&S feature about twenty of them and there is no profit in holding stock if it doesnāt sell. I just tuned 2 metres and it was dead except for a few birdiesā¦as it is here most of the time. People must be buying and holding on to these rigs just as ornaments, things to make the shack look more impressive!
As Andy said in the first post, āThere must be tons of this stuff gathering dust somewhereā - and more is being added daily!
Well Iām intrigued and keep my eyes peeled. Still people seem to think that something that was say Ā£799 in 1992 is worth Ā£350 now. Only an idiot would pay such money for old electronics.
What is intriguing is that the Icom 7300 is a new and an excellent radio yet there are zillions for sale secondhand. Likewise the Kenwood TS-590 is an excellent non-SDR radio. Again lots for sale. It looks to me that there seem to be plenty on newly licenced people rushing out spending big bucks on shiny radios and giving up the hobby 18mths later. Possibly because they donāt grok that the bands are rubbish now but will be better in 6 years time. That and running 100W SSB into a 1/2 sized G5RV is hardwork from UK sized gardens.
Ā£799 in 1992 would be Ā£1,619 in todayās money, but I agree that Ā£350 is still a lot to pay for ageing electronics.
There is also the case of manufacturers not producing the gear we actually want - what price an FT736 fully loaded (6m, 2m, 70cm, 23cm) or an IC901 similarly equipped. Both attract Kingās Ransom sums on the well known auction site (and elsewhere)
Well if there was a market theyād make and sell. There obviously isnāt. What surprises me is there isnāt sufficient market for the big manufacturers to make a model independant transverter housing and plug in cards. Like the ones they used to offer for the FT901 etc. The transverter interface could be common say to all the HF rigs they sell so you could buy the Icom VHF/UHF box and add it to your IC-7300. If the transverter was a plainish box then they could still continuously tart up the HF rigs every few years and just keep the VHF/UHF/SHF stuff the same.
Probably the Chinese cheap tat handies/mobiles has stolen lots of revenue from the big three such that there is no budget anymore to design small volume items. At least we have DB6NT, DG0VE, SG Lab, DownEast Microwave and the Ukranian transverter shop producing ready to go VHF and up toys for people who want to play but donāt want to or cannot build it themselves.
Except in that particular case there is also a VHF/UHF version of the IC-7300 coming out. The IC-9700.
But in general the idea makes a lot of sense - If you take a look at the Kenwood TS2000 - which is long overdue for replacement. that has a HF transciever and transverter boards in it. Creating those boards in a form that would fit inside a TS-590S would create a TS-2000 replacement with a lower cost of development and support.
I bought two 30 year old rigs for less than that amountā¦ a Trio TS-711E and a TS-811E. Now I have two 711ās. Is that pure greed or just common sense?
Edit: Just thought that the 711E would make a great handbag rigā¦ probably balanced by my TS-130V in the other hand. 
ā¦I just picked up a fully functional Kenwood TS-520S with remote VFO, speaker, and digital display and a new set of commercial tubes for $230 CDN (which is like 52 Pounds 
)ā¦the display had lost a regulator so once it got going its brain was permanently scrambled (hoping to use the slide-in cabinet for my uBITX)ā¦but other than that changed the lighting from AC to DC and installed some diode lightsā¦and my friend has PILES of old boards from countless rigs he uses for parts and buildsā¦countlessā¦and now Iām doing the sameā¦
ā¦a local ham hauls radios out of the dumpā¦itās how I got my Motorola MaxTrac and its TPN1110B power supplyā¦decommissioned forest service radiosā¦
That was a good buy! Mine cost me Ā£150 without the VFO, the digital display has since died, and recently the rig stopped transmitting but I havenāt found time to delve into it. It was a joy to use and outperforms many more modern rigs.
ā¦itās a great rig! Canāt wait to get some SDRās sitting next to itā¦the old and the new. New fellas are intrigued. Guess I havenāt seen any new test manuals in a whileā¦how can you not know how a tube works? Hope you get yours on the air soonā¦
