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Why are airband radios so expensive?

rv8ch

Well Known Member
Patron
I'm looking for a new handheld that supports 8.33khz spacing - anyone know why airband radios are so expensive? Other similar radios seem to cost 1/3 to 1/5 the price, but of course they are on different frequencies. Probably something obvious that I'm missing.
 
Limited market demand, which reduces economies of scale, plus the (not-entirely-erroneous) perception that pilots have money.
 
Find the Euro equivalent of a HAM (amateur) radio operator. Enlist their assistance in finding an SDR (software defined radio) handheld that can be reprogrammed for air band AM transmit/receive. I've never done it myself, but several years ago, a guy came to one of our Pumpkin Drops with an SDR handheld he had reprogrammed for air band work. IIRC, he said that it sold for around US $150. Obviously, he didn't need the narrow spacing that you do, but since the freqs are defined in software, I'd bet there's a Swiss HAM operator that can help with that.

Charlie
 
As a manufacturer of these things I can answer this question quite easily.

The simple answer: Make one and see how much it costs you in parts, labor, R&D, premises, machinery and test equipment, certification costs, taxes and duties, electricity and other municipal costs - then after all that add a bit if you don't feel like making this for free, then start dealing with shipping costs, insurance and distributors (which likely will simply double your price to them, if not even more) and you'll soon see that these things are actually not that bad.
In the end the manufacturer only gets a tiny fraction of what you spend to keep as profit. You are looking at perhaps 2-5% tops.

Economy of scale comes into this of course. If you produce a batch of 100 or a a batch of 10000 makes a huge difference in many ways.

We work on 1000 units just to pay off the certification costs (and that is just FCC). So you see you need to take a bit of a long term view on this and hope that your product is not going to be obsolete before you recouped all costs involved in developing it.

Then you have the added huge hassle of securing your supply chains - right now international electronics component supplies are under very serious strain and it can be hugely difficult to even find basic components like ceramic capacitors. If you do - be prepared to pay premium prices. Currently we get quoted lead times into the year 2021 for some components.
You can imagine what that means for any electronics manufacturer.

We are even affected by the U.S. - China tariff war. We source many of our components in the U.S. and have to pay U.S. tariffs of up to 25% on many of these items and even risk double tariffs these same components enter the U.S. again. It's a mess.

Bottom line - don't complain about the prices. They are really not bad for what is involved...

Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics
 
Informative post from a small-volume manufacturer's perspective, Rainier. The supply chain issues are significant ones I hadn't previously considered.

I believe Dave hit the high points well in post #2. The question does seem salient: why does it cost as much for a dual-VFO channelized 10 watt AM VHF transceiver on the air band that doesn't even come with a microphone :p as one would pay for an all-mode 100W transceiver with multiple filters, digital signal processing, color display, band scope, stacks of memory registers, and covers 1.8-450MHz transmit (i.e. the Icom IC-7000 that lives in my truck)?

The answers would appear to be: economy of scale, competition, demand, and a savvy consumer base not perceived to be as wealthy as aviators. Not all the above apply equally in all cases: Icom makes transceivers that share common engineering and software bloodlines for the commercial, aviation, marine and amateur markets, and enjoys all the competitive/ economy-of-scale advantages one could want, yet, on a per-feature basis, they vastly overprice the air band stuff (technically no more advanced than a trucker's CB) vs other offerings in their product line.
 
When I see the representatives of Avionics companies like MGL, Dynon, Trig, etc arriving at Oshkosh in their private 2018 Gulfstream G500 and being ferried to their hotel in a chauffeur driven Bentley Mulsanne, I?ll start suspecting they might be overcharging for their aeronautical com radios.

In the meantime I think the reality is that much as Rainier said above, the complexities of regulatory hurdles, international trade (all those tiny components and their raw materials have to come from somewhere), economy of scale, R&D for an item which isn?t a trivial thing to design, etc all push the price up.

I?ve seen some astronomical markups on non aviation goods from distributors too, to the point where the retailer can barely afford to make 10% or no one will buy it. I suspect the same applies to aircraft stuff.
 
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