I came across a receipt from GI3KDR (sadly SK) who sold me a new FT707 and microphone on 16 June 1980. It cost £535.90 then. John was the local agent for South Midlands Communications. He kindly knocked the price down to £520.
These were huge sums at the time. That would be more than three months salary for me and I had to take out a loan to afford it.
I have also been listing my Yaesu FT-710 Aess for sale second hand and it occurred to me that it is not bad value compared to what I used to spend. I thought I could compare these two fairly basic 100W HF rigs and find out how prices had changed. I would price the FT-710 without the Aess to make it more comparable with the FT-707
There has been 331.6% inflation in the intervening 45 years, according to the Bank of England inflation calculator. The full price was £535.90 so that would now be equivalent to a cost of £2312.83. The FT-710 is currently £899.00.
A rig which is a good mainstream radio for the time now costs £899.00 and not the equivalent of £2312.83 as a similar one did 45 years ago. Or, put another way, the rig I bought in 1980 cost 2.5 times more than a new basic rig might now - adjusted for present value.
I have looked up the price of the FT-707 as it appeared in the Short Wave Magazine of June 1980. This quotes a price of £466 including the mic for the FT-707. This did not include Value Added Tax at 15% - a clever way of suggesting that things were cheaper than they really were. Add 15% for the tax and you come to the price I paid. Advertising prices without the tax was later banned.
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| I found this nice photo of an FT-707 by EI5DD on the internet. |
And then, not only has the price more than halved in real terms, the radios are hardly comparable. The FT-710 is better than the FT-707 in the following ways:-
Touch screen display
Band display including (if you like that type of thing) 3D panoramic view
USB connection to PC for CAT connection
Built in sound card for data modes etc.
Digital audio processing and speech compression
Huge number of filtering options
Built in CW keyer
Dual VFOs
Better PA cooling system
Full coverage of 7MHz, plus 50MHz, 70MHz, and 5MHz
Plus loads of other things like being properly stable frequency-wise etc., etc.
The only real downside I can find is that modern rigs are not really fixable by the amateur. You used to get a circuit diagram showing discrete components ...
Faced with the choice between the ability to fix their rig themselves or buying it for less than half price I guess many of us would prefer the half price deal for a vastly better radio.
I paid £535 for my (new) FT-707 which in today's value is more than 3.5 times what I am selling the pristine (used) FT-710 for, and the FT-710 is a vastly better rig.
We live in inflationary times again - but nothing like the 15% of 1980 or 22% in 1975. Even excluding world tensions and the effect of tariffs (which thankfully do not affect amateurs in the UK much ... yet) and I hear amateurs complaining about the cost of the hobby.
Well, it used to cost far more.
73 Jim
GM4FVM
P.S. in June 1975 an RTTY terminal unit complete with keyboard was £670 (= £2891 today) and that was before you bought a radio to plug it into. An FT101ZD was £661 when you add the tax (= £2853 today) and the FT901ZD was £920 (= £3971 today) - hybrid valve era rigs with few modern features.
