that explains a lot.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Russ Kiehne" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2004 9:55 AM
Subject: Re: USB to Serial With a Laptop


> Did you know that the Realistic dx440 and dx390 are made by Sanjean.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Louis Kim Kline" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2004 9:45 PM
> Subject: Re: USB to Serial With a Laptop
>
>
>> Hi.
>>
>> My first horror story with Radio Shack goes back to the Realistic
>> DX-300General Coverage Communications Receiver.  I returned the first one
>> within 24 hours, wanting my money back after I saw how bad the front end
>> was and the fact that they wired the battery cradle backwards.  The store
>> manager refused to give me my money back, and would only allow me to
>> exchange it for another receiver.  Apparently in 1979 when I bought the
>> radio, all sales over a certain dollar amount were final, no refunds.
>> So,
>> I took the second receiver home.  It was better than the original
> receiver,
>> but it was still a piece of garbage, with intermod and garbage galore,
>> and
>> if you used a single wire antenna on the wire terminals the front end
>> saturated on medium wave and around the 49 meter band big time.  The RF
>> attenuator only worked on the coax connecter, so I made up a little
>> jumper
>> with a PL259 on one end, and an alligator clip on the other end.  I just
>> ran my random wire antenna in through the coax connector.  I also learned
>> that off tuning the preselector would sometimes roll back the sensitivity
>> to the point that I could tame down an overpowering station.
>>
>> Anyway, I started to run into problems with a self oscillation in the
>> receiver front end, and back to the store it went.  They sent it in for
>> repair, and it came back and worked for a few weeks (all they did was
>> realign it), and then the LSB mode quit working.  By this time I was
>> about
>> 2 months from the end of the warranty, and they wanted to give me still
>> another receiver.  I figured that if this one was as much of a problem as
>> the first two, I would be stuck with it.  They also offered to give me a
>> credit towards the purchase of the DX302 which was going to be released
> soon.
>>
>> Well, like our friend with the scanner, I decided to make a ruckus about
> it
>> in a croweded store on a Friday night, and threatened the store with
>> legal
>> action if my money wasn't refunded promptly.
>>
>> But, the crowning glory was that I got a hold of the district manager's
>> phone number and gave him an earfull at 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday
>> morning.  The local store called me at about 10:00 a.m. that same morning
>> and told me to bring in the receiver with all acc4essories and my sales
>> receipt and they would refund my money.
>>
>> I avoided purchasing major pieces of equipment from Radio Shack for a
>> number of years because of that incident, relenting in the late 1980's to
>> buy a PRO2020 scanner, which actually was a halfway decent scanner, and
> the
>> Realistic DX440, which was a great FM receiver, but the MW/SW reception
> was
>> still crap.
>>
>> I presently still have the Realistic DX390 receiver, which is actually a
>> reasonable receiver, ignoring the flimsy headphone and antenna connectors
>> which I never use anyway.
>>
>> That is my horror story with Radio Shack.
>>
>> I do have to say, though, that I miss their Tandy brand of computers.
> True
>> that some of them were turkeys, but I caught a couple of them on sale
>> that
>> were very solid performing computers.  I had a Tandy 1000RL with a 40MB
>> hard drive, the upgrade to 768KB of RAM, and the clock chip.  For a DOS
>> machine in a ham shack, it was a great little machine.  It was very well
>> shielded, so radio noise was virtually nil, and it had a small foot print
>> which suited the available space in my ham shack.  And, I got it on
>> closeout for $399!
>>
>> The other computer that I bought from them was a 386SX 33MHz machine that
>> had a 106 MB hard drive and 2 MB of RAM which I expanded to 4 MB to make
>> Windows 3.1 run better.  That machine had a double enclosure around the
>> main board and the expansion cards, and as you might expect with that
>> much
>> metal around the guts of the machine, it was also quiet from a radio
>> standpoint.
>>
>> Those were great machines.
>>
>> But, I think the purchase that I liked the best was the HTX202.  I liked
>> that radio because it had the toughest front end of any HT that I've ever
>> carried through downtown Rochester.  I think they hit a home run with
>> that
>> one, and I was sorry to see them discontinue it, especially since the
>> radios that they followed up with weren't nearly as well designed.
>>
>> But, it seems like when they get a good product, they usually end up
>> discontinuing it about the time you want to go buy one.  I was going to
>> pick up their CD recorder after I finished paying for the new roof that I
>> put on the house this summer.  Yep, you guessed it!  They discontinued
>> it,
>> and didn't replace it with anything equivalent.  I'm still looking for a
> CD
>> recorder.
>>
>> 73, de Lou K2LKK
>>
>>
>>
>> Louis Kim Kline
>> A.R.S. K2LKK
>> Home e-mail:  [log in to unmask]
>> Work e-mail:  [log in to unmask]
>> Work Telephone:  (585) 697-5753
>>
>