--- James Duffey JamesDuffey@comcast.net wrote:
The rise of Japanese radio manufacturers was a contributing cause of the demise of ham radio manufacturing in this country. Some of us would like them to realize that they have most of the ham radio market here and that providing a rig that provides 220 MHz capabilities for an area in which they dominate the market is not too much to ask. They could probably make a buck or two on the deal in the meantime. - Duffey
It seeems to me the Japanese manufacturers are primarily geared towards the Japanese Amateur market. This is still the worlds largest market although it's shrunk considerably since the days when Japan has 1.3 million Radio Hams. They acheived that phenominal number through the introduction of a code free HF Amateur licence way back in the 1950's.
In global terms Japanese Amateur rig manufacturers aren't really that big, they are small companies.
When Motorola took over Yaesu (Standard-Vertex) it wasn't the Amateur Radio part they were interested in. The ham side was just a small niche division that happened to come with the rest of the business.
Over 40 DXCC countries have an Amateur band at 70 MHz but that suffers from the same lack of commercial rigs as 220 in the states.
I feel that unless an Amateur band is available globally it's just not going to be worth any manufacturer producing rigs for it. So it'll be up to Amateurs to design and build their own rigs for their "local" bands.
73 Trevor M5AKA
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