This is how the 10 Meter market evolved. In 1969, Herb Johnson of Swan Engineering produced the Cygnet 260, a 10-80m bare bones transceiver. It was basically a Swan 350-C with much of the circuitry eliminated to better compete with the new Japanese sideband rigs appearing on the market. At this time, CB radio was going great guns. Sam Lewis and his father, of Palomar Electronics, were producing the 546 sideband rig and eventually the Skipper 71, 73, 73B, and private labeled the 1046 for Swan. Herb removed all but 10 Meters from the Cygnet 260, added there most sophisticated VFO circuit, and replaced the final section with a single 6LF6 to increase the power output because the 260 only put out 60-Watts on 10m. He stared selling the radio as the Swan 1011. Sales of the 1011 went through the roof.
Someone else that went through the roof was Johnny Griggs of the west coast head of the ARRL (American Radio Relay League). Inside of six months, Griggs went down to see Herb several times threatening to have the amateur fraternity boycott Swan. Sam Lewis’s dad and Herb cooked up a deal, Swan would not market the radio, they would build the radio a under private label program under the Palomar Siltronix label. During this period, Palomar was also building VFOs for Baggys radio under his “Slider/Scanner” brand. Siltronix took over the marketing and expanded the distribution to their Palomar 2-step distributors. Up until then, the 1011 was only available through Swan amateur dealers.
Swan was bought out buy Cubic Corporation, a San Diego based conglomerate that mainly sold sophisticated communications equipment to the US government and military agencies around the globe. A couple of years after that, Cubic bought Siltronics from Palomar. At that time, Palomar hooked up with Les Ernshaw and started the Kachina project. At the same time, Palomar was in partnership with Communications Power Incorporated (CPI), developing the DigiCom, the first programmable CB radio, until the FCC, under pressure from Cobra and EF Johnson, told them they had to change the circuit, even though they (FCC) type accepted the radio. The partnership lead to the CPI radio and accessory lineup.
In 1980, Palomar died while the10 Meter market faded. However, the Palomar people continued in the amplifier business, making amplifiers for their friend Im, the owner of Sommerkamp. Sommerkamp had the European distribution sewn up. Im was also responsible for putting Yaesu Munsen (YM) on the map in the early 70’s. When he first visited Mr. Hasagowa in Japan, his main business mainly consisted of repairing color TVs in Tokyo. He had built a few sideband radios and was starting to build up sales outside Japan. Meanwhile, in the US a couple of guys started Spectronics East & West. They would drive around LA in a converted ambulance (circa Ghostbusters) delivering radios to anyone with the cash. Im made a deal with Mr. Hasagawa. Im put money into YM, in return, Im got total distribution rights for a specified period and all would bear the Sommerkamp brand. Im showed Mr. Hasagawa the one thing that put YM on the map, how to install the crystal for easy 11 Meter conversion.
Im had an engineer named Mr. Sakamoto in Japan. When the exclusive ran out in the late 70’s, Im had Mr. Sakamoto develop the TS788, Palomar/RF Limited supplied the MRF454 transistors and when the radio was available, RF Limited in exchange got the TS788 exclusive for the Americas. This was when I got involved with RF Limited, repairing Sommerkamp 788 radios.
The 788 was a compact 10/11 Meter transceiver with output power around 70 Watts PEP. The SSB transmission was not the cleanest on the market and there were many problems with the Circuit boards. It was a dual board radio with a wiring harness sandwiched between them. The boards were also phenolic double sided and the feed-thoughs were constantly breaking. Although this was a very innovative radio, it was a nightmare to work on. Im realized the magnitude of the problem and after a while abandoned the project
