Jose Silva CT1AXG Hi Jose, Welcome to AM ! At least that's what I get from your questions. To establish "value" for an AM rig you have to set some priorities. If you also plan to use the equipment on SSB you may limit yourself somewhat because of likely technical compromises. Broadly stated, most contemporary transceivers presume the user will be using SSB, so the audio quality on transmit and receive will typically suffer on AM. That's because manufactuers traditionally shortchange audio quality for SSB. For those of us who use only AM, such rigs have little value. There are exceptions, including the Yaesu FT-102 which can be dressed up with some audio modifications to sound like this:
http://www.wa3vjb.com/sound/HUZ-FT102%20(2).mp3 The older Yaesu FT-101E can also be made to sound very good, and the purchase price for used gear like this is less than $400. Here's Frank's example of the transceiver: http://www.wa3vjb.com/sound/WY3D-Demo.mp3 On receive, the Ten-Tec RX 340 uses synchronous detection and low-distortion audio circuitry to recover audio that sounds like this: http://www.wa3vjb.com/sound/DefinitiveVJB.mp3 I have to point out that the economic value is different than the practical operating value. The Yaesu FT1000MP sounds very, very good when transmitting AM with a good quality microphone. Yet, why pay for all the other stuff on there that a user oriented toward AM would never utilize? For the person who specializes iN AM, the same or far less money could be spent on a rig designed with AM as its emphasis. If you're planning vintage gear (and this is the sort of equipment that emphasizes AM) you'll need to sort out whether you can settle for audio that sounds like the space shuttle, or whether you want audio that's human-sounding: warm and high quality. In this equation, establishing "value" is up to you rather than recommendations from out here. You'll know what you want. Best of luck, and feel free when you decide among some candidates to run them by the opionion gallery here. Paul/VJB Annapolis __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com

