Unless you've been under a rock for a few days you've already have heard (and read) the news about ICOM's new entry into portable communications for HF-VHF-UHF. Internal battery, bluetooth, GPS and D-Star. The last time they ventured into portable HF QRP territory was with their IC-703 and 703+ HF only transceivers.
Even though I had my base setup back in the late 60's / early 70's I was fascinated by walkies-talkies. Of course, like many a youth, I started out using 100mw walkies-talkies that were usually on channel 11 or 14. I guess they had more "character" back then, because I'm certainly not as gun-ho with today's walkies-talkies or HAM HT's.
Al Gross was a pioneer in the 40's with portable two-way radios, but I'm not sure how he or anyone could have predicted the wild popularity of CB radio. In the early sixties even 100mw handhelds commanded a "King's Ransom". A 100mw walkie-talkie in 1960 sold for up to $100 or more, and using the inflation calculator, a $100 purchase was equal to $858.13 in 2019 dollars. I'll skip my early 100mw radios and scoot right up to the first 5 watt walkie-talkie that I ever owned, Radio Shack's TRC-100B 6-channel model. While the general opinion was that Lafayette Radio Electronics equipment was better quality than Radio Shack (never proven), LRE had a hard time competing against transceivers that looked as good as the ones Tandy sold. The TRC-100B (NEW FOR 69)had a 5 watt input power and featured a mechanical filter for better adjacent channel rejection, 6 channel positions with channel 11 installed. Other features: ANL, AGC, center loaded antenna, automatic "range boost", and a separate speaker and ceramic microphone! This series (the 3-watt TRC-99 and 5-watt TRC-100B), although plastic, was much more pleasing to the eye compared to most competition (with the exception of Midland). Suffice to say I ran through batteries and my Dad's wallet quite frequently when using my TRC-100B.
The TRC-100B came with 1 set of crystals leaving 5 paired open slots for additional channels. Crystals were $5 per channel so if you wanted all six slots full it would cost you an additional $25 or, $174.78 in 2019 dollars.
There were places you could buy crystals other than Radio Shack at the time so it was possible to save $5, but today, finding new crystals is near impossible and sometimes you have to extract them from "donors".
For the frugal Radio Shack had the TRC-99, which had identical internal circuitry but only put out 3 watts and had 3 less channels positions than it's big brother. I will continue this thread in the months to come. 73 Woody
As of late I've been clearing out older radios from the "Ye-Old" closet (you just missed my TRC-459) when I ran across one of my "Crown Jewels", the Realistic TRC-23 "Navaho" AM CB base station.
While I actually owned the "B" version, the 23 "C" for all intents and purposes, looks just like it. If there was ever an "A" model it was never advertised, and the 23 "C" was the last of that model, being replaced by the TRC-30. I bought the one pictured due to it's condition. (can't tell the difference between the Navaho 23 series and 30? check out the comparison below) Radio Shack's TRC-23 series was a no-frills/am-only 23 channel base radio that was completely solid-state. It debuted at a time when the tube type CB radio base stations from Lafayette Radio Electronics dominated the urban market. Compared to their mobile radios, and later model base stations, this was probably the least attractive radio ever to don the Realistic brand name.
TRC-23C FROM STORAGE
Not only was it cosmetically bland, the features were bare bones. While I owned this radio my entire being was focused on one thing, and one thing only - to remedy the high-pitched "tin can" transmit audio.
I never could. Home-made FET audio amplifier kits taken from S9, CB Radio, and Popular Electronics magazines either were toasted by my soldering skills or just failed to do much more than make me sound like I was talking in a louder tin can (I learned a lot about how NOT to handle MOSFET's).
THE NAVAHO BASE EVEN CAME WITH MOBILE MTG BRACKETS!
The 23B came out around 1971, followed by the 23-C several years later.
Both the B and C models are easy to spot because the controls knobs are on the right side of the front panel whereas the TRC-30 series moved the knobs to the left side.
TRC-30A
I've received some e-mail over the years that were testimonials on how good their audio was using the TRC-23B, but when a timeline was worked out it was clear that the owners has used a 30A instead.
As the Navaho name became more popular, a step up from either of these radios was found in the "Navaho Pro" models, and continued even further with the wildly popular TRC-57 and 457 am/ssb base stations.
BTW, an excellent website that features just about every Radio Shack catalog for your perusal can be found HERE. Well, enough blather on this low end rig of the past. From time-to-time it's always nice to take a look at how things were, so many decades ago... 73 Woody
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.
As I mentioned in my post from the 12th I went on a CB Radio advertisement bender on YouTube that was bound to take up so much room that this weeks "YouTube Surfing" would be more than one part. Towards the end of this posting I also have cool 'REMCO' AM broadcast kit-for-kids, so let's begin -
Here's more from actor Chuck Napier
IN THIS COMMERCIAL A ROYCE RADIO TAKES A BEATING
A CB RELATED BUD LIGHT COMMERCIAL WITH WILL FERRELL
I thought I would separate this video from the others. It was a look into CB radio in the UK circa 1981. I'm not any kind of expert on CB across the pond but I seem to recall they didn't officially get legal CB frequencies until much later.
The current channels mimic the US by having 40, but that's where the similarity ends. In the UK the 40 channels are up in the high 27 MHz range [27.60125 MHz - 27.99125 MHz], just below the 10 meter Ham band using FM mode.
Here are a few of the videos on YouTube that I found interesting
CQ SERENADE
LEARNING MORSE CODE WITH MUSIC
VERY COOL MOD - 11M ANALOG CB MODIFIED TO 6M
DAVE CASLER, KE0OG, TALKS ANTENNA ANALYZERS 2015
FROM THE "FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH DEPT. -
I watched a recent YouTube video, titled "The Baofeng UV5R Not
Legal To Use" and found the title and content of the video pertaining it's legality
erroneous. In subsequent comments, once again, someone brought up the fake story about these handhelds being banned after September this year.
Just to be absolutely clear - it is FAKE NEWS.
Evidently the author of the YouTube video determined this as well because it was removed from his YouTube channel several days later. I'm pretty sure this false story will pop up again in the future because junk like that tends to take on a life of it's own.
Just a few thoughts and images which describe our "Rolling Stones" experience, seen on Saturday July 27, 2019 here in Houston - nuff said.
The story goes back to Christmas 2018 when I opened up a innocuous looking envelope from my wife containing tickets to see the Stones in April of this year 😂. I had never expressed a desire to see them because at this stage of the game how good could they be compared to the cost and trouble to get there? You see, I haven't really paid much attention to them since the early 80's and figured that whenever I saw a tour coming up it would be an expensive "oldies" venue with a bunch of non animated old guys who couldn't keep up with their own past. I was wrong. Of course when April came around and as I started gearing up for the event, we found out abruptly (a few days before the concert) that the whole tour had just been postponed due to Mick's heart problem and subsequent surgery 😣. Not too long after Mick's surgery and quick recovery (late May) the new dates were announced and it was now ordained that we would see the Rolling Stones on July 27th, one day after his 76th Birthday. Enough back story...
The week of the concert it was announced that "Bishop Gunn" was joining the tour and would be the opening act. We had never heard of them, however, they put on a loud, rousing show highlighting their own brand of Southern Rock achieving their goal - to juice up the crowd for the main event. **To be clear, the following videos aren't mine, but courtesy of YouTube embedding. Follow the videos on YouTube to catch more great concert footage by the people that took them! The Stones burst onto stage just before nine o'clock, opening with the song that first got me listening to them - Jumping Jack Flash
We weren't sitting as close to the action as the video above but seriously, there probably wasn't a bad seat in the house.
The photo on the left was taken by my old iPhone 6 cell phone - and we were sitting way up in section 652
The set list (to the right) was good and included several songs ("Out Of Control" and "Slipping Away") we had never heard.
They were good, but where the heck did they come from?
Obviously, from albums I'd never listened to because I had stopped following them decades before, never realizing that they still put out new music that was very listenable.
OUT OF CONTROL
We learned (after-the-fact) that concert goers could tweet in their votes for their favorite Stones song and the highest tweeted song would then be performed "live". In Houston that night, the tweeted favorite song was "Heartbreaker"
After wasting enough of your time here's the upshot:
Traffic to and from NRG was a non-issue, and $30 to park was more-or-less expected. Of course, the food and beverage prices were stadium priced, yet a
few deals could be had (Karbach draft and potato wedges). I'm trying not to fall into the 'abyss of age' trap by basing my thoughts on some sliding scale on how they did vs. how old they are, so, as a "typical" Rock Concert this was a energy filled event, complete with great tunes, guitar playing, vocals, and Mick Jagger played a mean harmonica. 73, WOODY Side note: Concert T-shirt prices were about $60 and up. The selection to choose from was, eh, so we took the money that we would have spent on two shirts and bought all of the CD's we had never heard the next day on Amazon. While the event is over I have a lot of good music to catch up on.
It took a few days from getting my Ya-Ya's out last Saturday (we went to go see the Rolling Stones) to recover - regroup - and do some You Tubing. So for me, it was a short week. There is not a lot to view this week, but it's something.
CW McCALL INTERVIEWED ON AMERICAN BANDSTAND 1975
Why 2.6 Million People Can Push This Button But We Can't - The "Modern Rogue"
Fred-in-the-Shed demonstrates how to set the mic gain on the CRT SS 6900N [HINT: It's not quite as easy as you think]
And I'll end with a look at music video for the yet-to-be-released NEW Pixies album. Very classic Pixies!
Here we are in 2019. But first, let's look at what I wrote 10 years ago -
WAS IT OR WASN'T IT DEPT.
In 2001, I wrote about this unique T.I. CB, and wondered if anyone had ever seen or owned one. I never got a reply from someone who did. But the saga continues:
TEXAS INSTRUMENTS,
the Calculator/IC manufacturer was supposed to introduce a new CB in
the late 70's (1977/78), model number SM-172/mobile SM-173/Base. This
was a unique radio: Remote mount with all the controls in the mike-head.
"Hey" you exclaim, "There's nothing unique about that". This is true my
friends, but this istheonly one
I know of that was AM AND SSB! The other interesting feature was the
"Auto-Tune" clarifier.
TI said that it would auto tune your SSB signals
for you and maybe that's why I don't recall seeing more than just a
picture of one (How in the world would is determine which SSB signal you
wanted clarified?).
If you remember those first handheld TI calculators
with the little red LED display then you recognise the "look" of this
am-ssb-in-the-mike rig. If anyone actually OWNS one, send me an e-mail
with some photo's and your comments!
UPDATE:
Every day, information is easier than ever to find on the Internet, and especially so in GOOGLE Books. I was doing a search (unrelated to TI) on Citizens Band Radio when I happened across a treasure trove of Popular Mechanics magazines, on GOOGLE BOOKS, that went back beyond the birth of CB. So now I was curious to see if their coverage of the "new" 40 channel radios had any further mention of the TI CB and hit pay dirt! While this was not an in-depth article on the TI radio, it did offer further details: First of all - does anyone else think this guy looks like a young Donald Trump? No? Okay. Moving on...
After the 23 channel radio blood bath (which forbid selling non-40 channel radios after January 1977), "review" articles appeared in many CB magazines extolling the virtues of the new rigs. In November 1977, Popular Mechanics had a several page article detailing the new SSB sets on the market, as well as transceivers that would soon come out. One such rig was the Texas Instrument SM-172/173 series of computer aided transceivers. The mobile unit was to sell for around $300, with the base station only $100 more. For either rig, the handheld microphone was the heart of operations. Featuring a LED channel display you could change channels easily as well as select your mode of operation (AM-LSB-USB). The complete features on the microphone were:
Channel selector
Mode selector
Volume up/down
Clarifier
Keypad with direct channel input
Clear channel scan
SWR Check
Selective call
The selective call idea was nothing new to CB radio however TI's approach was. It would only work between two different TI transceivers with each radio having its own unique digital identifier so only another identifier loaded in memory could break squelch The SM series also offered automatic frequency clarification. When the microphone was keyed it would send out a very brief two-tone signal which would be used by another SM series radio to get exactly on frequency - negating the use of a clarifier when two of these transceivers communicated.
While innovative to the max, it's easy to see how this CB would have failed. Their closed system architecture, while futuristic, was predicated with the knowledge that it could only work between one TI CB and another. Could this be why the TI system never saw the light of day, and was quickly killed off by Texas Instruments itself?
Unless any new info comes my way we will have to assume the answer is "YES", or, another update in 2029?
I have a good variety of YouTube subjects for your edification. While some weeks go by without much of anything to view, others (like this one) have TMI. Let's begin...
VIDEO NO. 1 is a very good, and very technical lesson on "How Antennas Work"
IN VIDEO NO.2 W6LG talks about how best to set your microphone gain.
VIDEO NO.3 is a documentary on the making of "Diamonds Are Forever"
VIDEO NO.4 takes you on a tour of KB3RHR's vintage AM shack
IN VIDEO NO. 5 W6LG is back again, this time comparing antennas for your Baofeng HT
AND LASTLY, JUMP BACK TO THE PAST! CHILL OUT WITH "THUNDERBIRDS" IN: "TRAPPED IN THE SKY"
PINTEREST UPDATE: OVER 60 IMAGES UPLOADED THIS WEEK! (LINK UPPER RIGHT, or, HERE)
One image from that update includes this rig - Midland 76-900 UK FM Version.
11m is alive and well in the US and Canada but what about England? Well, as previously reported, "Fred-In-The-Shed" and the group he talks with on 27.305 USB is fairly active in the South Eastern part of the UK.
But there's more... While checking out several of my bookmarked UK SDR sites yesterday I happened to notice some waterfall activity just below the Triple Nickel. It was Sunday morning around 9:30 a.m. (CST) and a local UK group was in the middle of their afternoon Net near Derby (because I was listening to an SDR site based in Derby and their signals were fairly strong I figured they were close by). So where was I? On 27.515 USB
I was listening to the East Midlands SSB DX Group which was running their usual Sunday afternoon Net (UK Time). At least a half dozen operators were in attendance, as well as a "guest" check-in from a YL named Emma.
She was using her boyfriends setup but seemed pretty well acquainted with the lingo, and after the Net ended she QSY'd a few kc's "UP" to initiate a QSO with another station. Shortly after that, the SDR waterfall lit up with activity from France, and then much later - Italy. While this isn't an exact recording of the Italian traffic I heard, this YouTube post is pretty darn close!
It's good to know that many frequencies aren't as empty as they seem- you just have to listen for awhile... 73, Woody
I'll skip my early 100mw radios and scoot right up to the first 5 watt walkie-talkie that I ever owned, Radio Shack's TRC-100B 6-channel model.
The TRC-100B came with 1 set of crystals leaving 5 paired open slots for additional channels. Crystals were $5 per channel so if you wanted all six slots full it would cost you an additional $25 or, $174.78 in 2019 dollars.
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 know of that was AM AND SSB! The other interesting feature was the
"Auto-Tune" clarifier. 
First of all - does anyone else think this guy looks like a young Donald Trump? No? Okay. Moving on...
