Pye Telecom/Philips - NOT amateur radio

Most of my working life was in design in the Pye Telecom days. Although Philips bought Pye in the late 1960s, it was very "hands off" for years. Eventually we badged some products Philips such as this PF85 shown here. It was a good product with some truly great engineers. After the late 1980s I think most products were badged Philips. The PF85 and the PFX shared many modules.

How time flies - Philips Velo

Back in the late 1990s I had a Philips Velo handheld that connected (via a wire) to the internet. I think it was at 14.4k.

These days, many people have speeds of hundreds of MB over their tiny phones. I cannot remember what happened to this Philips device. At the time, it was "state of the art". How far we have come in under 20 years. What will the next 20 years bring?  Remember Windows CE?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philips_Velo

First UHF Radio

My very first UHF radio was a version of the synthesised FM320 Australian UHF FM CB mobile made by Philips. This was a 70cm amateur version. It was called the FM321. It produced 4W on TX and used channel numbers. I remember someone from Philips discussing producing an amateur band version, at an IEE conference I think.

Ergonomically it was excellent. It only got used at home, never mobile. It worked some impressive DX on UHF FM simplex. I cannot remember when it was sold.

If I am honest this was one of the best radios I ever had. It had no memories, no fancy gismos, but it worked well.  If my memory serves me, I used this with a TV J-Beam antenna (hand rotated) which still had about 10dB gain in the 70cm amateur band.