173MHz

[kev1299]

Hi, I noticed a thread on another forum that implied that receivers and transmitters on 173MHz in the UK seem to be unavailable at the moment. It was suggested on there, coupled with the fact that the 173 HSL yagi isn't going to be produced, that you are dropping 173 from your products in favour of 433. Any truth in the rumour?
Many thanks,
Kev.

[canadamanada]

Kevin,
I get the impression that they want to focus on the 433/434 gear for the UK/European market.

[kev1299]

Kevin,
I get the impression that they want to focus on the 433/434 gear for the UK/European market.

I did mention that as the reason in my post, my question was "is it true"?
The lack of an answer suggests that it is.

[canadamanada]

It certainly would make sense from a business perspective for a few reasons:

The UK is the only major market in the world for 173Mhz.

The size of the antennas certainly add up to higher input costs on the manufacturing side as well as higher shipping costs.

Switching a market to 433/434 makes more sense in that you have everybody on the same page.

I'm just pulling this out of my bum... my telemetry selling bum, that is. I'm sure Marshall will be along to tell you what's up. Don't worry about the delay - it's grouse season!

[Barbary90]

As a 173 user I'm interested in getting a answer as I can't get one on facebook.

[Flynn]

It would be good to be kept informed on the level of support available for 173mhz users and find it strange on the lack of responce.

Yours Jim.

[RLBagley]

Hi, I noticed a thread on another forum that implied that receivers and transmitters on 173MHz in the UK seem to be unavailable at the moment. It was suggested on there, coupled with the fact that the 173 HSL yagi isn't going to be produced, that you are dropping 173 from your products in favour of 433. Any truth in the rumour?
Many thanks,
Kev.

Well, transmitters, dog collars and receivers are certainly still available in the 173 band, but maybe what you heard about was with respect to our coming out with an HSL Yagi for the 173 receivers?

This was asked on another Forum last fall, and my reply to that question might be helpful:

Robert ,

Whats the reason behind not continuing the development on the smaller 173 yagi ?

If its just a case of logistics and not performance related is there any possibility that i could buy one of the prototypes that ime sure you have lying gathering dust somewhere .

Ive never had any real problems with 173 yagi size , but i would like the smaller option if at all possible .

If you do have a small prototype available ( and for sale ) then let me know the price and i can collect it from steve as he's only about 3/4 of an hour away .

Thanks .

Pete.

Well, we got pretty far along with them (together with the 151MHz version as well) and were pretty excited.

The great thing was that both those frequencies have better propagation performance over uneven terrain, so to be able to make them 30% smaller in length (50% smaller in size/area) is the right way to push the development for falconers.

But the sad reality is that there are always a bunch of R&D projects going on at the same time and we are having to allocate resources. We had to take an honest look at the future for 173 going forward and where to put the efforts in terms of product changes.

For every 100 receivers sold nowadays, about 40 of them are 433, another 55 are 216 and only 5 would be 173. And that number has been declining for several years now. So we all looked at each other and decided we had to focus and put our development resources behind what people were actually buying.

The reason for the small number of 173 users is that the band is only used in the UK, together with a very few in Australia, whilst 433 is standard all throughout Europe, the UK and the Middle East (called UHF there) as well so it's rapidly growing. More and more falconers in the US are now switching to it as well, for the small size and absence of interference/noise.

Anyway, let me look around for any prototypes. The only problem would be that they would have been constructed earlier in the process, and might not be at the performance levels we've now achieved on the 151 and 216 HSL yagis.

(I wish I had a different answer)

RB