Signal/One was a manufacturer of high performance SSB and CW HF radio communications transceivers initially based in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA.
Contents |
The company started as a division of NCR in Florida. A key executive was Dick Ehrhorn, ham callsigns W4ETO and W0ID. Beginning in the 1960s with the Signal/One CX7, ("S1", as they were called) the company made radios that were priced well above the competition and offered many advanced features for the time,[1] such as passband tuning, broadband transmission, dual receive, built-in IAMBIC keyer, electronic digital read out, solid state design, QSK and RF clipping. A Signal/One radio was said to be a complete high performance, station in a box.[1]
While marketed to the affluent radio amateur, it has been suggested that the primary market for Signal/One, like Collins, was military, State Department, and government clandestine (spy) communications. Although prized for the performance and advanced engineering, Signal/One's products did not sell as well as hoped, and the company gradually fell on hard times. From the 1970s though the 1990s, every few years, Signal/One was spun off, sold, and resurfaced at another location.[1]
The surviving Signal/One products are sought after and actively collected. These include the CX7, CX7A, CX7B, CX11 and Milspec models. The last Signal/One radio was a re-engineered ICOM IC-781.