Related to GMRS ... KG-805F coming out

[Lscott]

Question is, how are we as customers going to convince the corporations to move production back to the states, when they have cheap Chinese labor?

 

The argument here is nothing more than stating the sad current state of affairs the US has got itself into...

Well there are really two issues here. One is cheap labor. Second is cheap design.

 

You can still move manufacturing back to the US and still produce garbage because the design was cheap. The CCR's are the way they are because of both of the above factors. Cheap labor keeps cost down. A cheap design that takes maximum advantage of highly integrated chips which very often results in a compromise somewhere in performance with a trade off in reduced cost. Now you have a really cheap radio with so-so performance.

 

There is a reason why the higher end radios perform better, cost more, than many CCR's is because more effort was made during the design and testing phase with less corners in performance cut. To design high performance hardware requires very careful evaluation of nearly every component used. For a $25 Baofeng just how much R and D money do you think they are going to spend on such a cheap radio? For the CCR's they use a "datasheet" reference design, tweak it a bit. Then try some "can you hear me now tests" and then it goes to marketing.

[Lscott]

Well I'll find out with TYT. I have one of their cheap radios when I'm not particular about the performance. This one the internal microphone quit working, external speaker mic works fine. I suspect its a problem with the jack or a cracked solder connection on the circuit board. Either way I sent their tech support an email asking for a schematic and or service manual for it. I'll see if I really get one.

 

As a side note all of my Ham and commercial Kenwood radios I have the service manuals for them EXCEPT for the newest model, TH-D74A. All the other ones were easy to find and download online. 

 

https://www.mods.dk/manual.php

Well just an update. TYT won't supply a schematic but they did send me two new pin jacks free of charge. Granted CCR's are not the greatest radios but for a general "beater radio" its not bad. I'm not expecting great performance out of it. If I have real critical performance requirements I'll depend on my Kenwood radios.

 

People forget that years ago electronics made in Japan were considered a joke too. Now those same Japanese companies have upped their game producing quality products and are respected manufactures today. I wouldn't count out the Chinese where down the road they end up producing top quality products at some point.

[gman1971]

Oh well, about the TYT schematics... that is kinda what we suspected anyways....

 

I just find the beater radio argument less and less convincing every day that goes by... much the same way some people carry a 1000 dollar cellphone Galaxy S20 or whatever it happens to be the latest toy at the phone store... people don't carry a 1998 bar phone b/c they are afraid/worried their super duper Galaxy S20 is going to break on concrete, or go down the ocean like the Titanic... well, I've carried an EVX-539 and now a 6550, and yes, it will suck if they break, but these radios are just meant to take abuse, can be submerged... and yes, if my XPR goes down in the ocean like the Titanic I am SOL, but so am I if my 1 grand Galaxy S20 (I don't own that phone btw, haha) goes down the ocean too... in the end, it is what it is.

 

Comparing the Japanese radios from the 70s, 80s to the CCR turds is kinda irrelevant, but if we must pick on it, then its worth stating that Japan situation wasn't, and still isn't the same as China's situation. Also, these old Japanese made radios were actually surprisingly good radios, and whether the "perceived" opinion was they were a joke or not, they weren't bad radios. Those radios did gave the US-made stuff a good run for their money, whereas the CCRs simply do not. Also, by the time the CCRs catch up to the rest of the world, the prices won't be CCR prices anymore.

 

When something is too cheap to be true its b/c there is a catch somewhere, someone is getting shafted somewhere along the way, either cheap labor, stolen designs, dangerous device... something. 

 

G.

 

Well just an update. TYT won't supply a schematic but they did send me two new pin jacks free of charge. Granted CCR's are not the greatest radios but for a general "beater radio" its not bad. I'm not expecting great performance out of it. If I have real critical performance requirements I'll depend on my Kenwood radios.

 

People forget that years ago electronics made in Japan were considered a joke too. Now those same Japanese companies have upped their game producing quality products and are respected manufactures today. I wouldn't count out the Chinese where down the road they end up producing top quality products at some point.