40 YEARS AGO A CB COST...

A BUTT-LOAD OF $$$

At one time or another you'll run across a conversation or text chat relating to people who spend $2k on a transceiver for use on 11 meters. In some instances they are Hams who will use it legally on Ham bands, occasionally dropping in on 11m as well, but there are quite a few folks who aren't Amateur radio operators spending the big bux.


1978 saw the birth of some really high-end transceivers like ARF, CPI, and STONER. In 1978 the list price of the new Stoner Pro 40 was $900. This did not include all of the accessories like the scope, station console, AM adapter (the Pro 40 was SSB only), HAM-40 transverter, and external speaker. Stoner's initial entry @ $900 fit right in with the ARF-2001 and CPI-2000 (which also had a bunch of accessories).

So if Joe Schmo really wanted to buy a Stoner Pro 40 in 1978 he may have had to use the money he had saved to buy another car** to afford the $900 price tag. It was the "cats meow" Joe might have said.

As money issues and family obligations tend tend to happen, Joe Schmo probably sold his radio gear a few years later, and didn't think about radio until 2019

Joe decided to buy an Icom IC-7610 for $2800.

Was he crazy?

Nope


Using an inflation calculator, the $900 he spent on the Stoner was equal to $3,541.62 in today's money. To "Joe", the Icom was a bargain.

This ends my inflationary "tale of two transceivers", purchased decades apart (albeit for different services) . 

CLASSIC ROCK

The best thing about a classic Rock station is that you can turn on the radio after a years time, and hear the same song list playing that you listened to a year or more later (I suppose that could also be the worst thing, depending on your viewpoint).





73

WOODY


**
 I know how outlandish it seems to have only $900 towards a car, but times were definitely different. In 1975/6 I traded my beat up '67 Mustang Fastback towards the purchase of my first foreign sports car - a NEW MG "Midget". Before tax, the price was around $5900.00 (several years later I kicked myself for not buying one of the first Mazda RX-7's at $6k which increased by $4k in only a couple years). 

I guess you might think of this as an anti 2-way radio kinda car but I took several road trips from Texas to California in this, along with my E.F. Johnson Viking 352, working 5 watt Dx around the world.