Gene, it may be as simple as that we are stuck in the past.
BTW, a few years ago I found and bought off Ebay a fully spooled mile of military commo wire on the RL/159 cable spool. I have the hang tag somewhere around here. Ive used it in some antenna applications as a feedline for receiving DXing antennas matching impedance with a diy balun. It's hard to use up a mile of it and I've barely dented the spool.
Current project is the assembly of a low power 40 meter SSB radio designed by an Indian Ham Ashkar Farhan a genius designer who designed an affordable radio to be built by villagers and poorer folks in India with roughly $16 costs in parts on todays market. Rather than use ferrite toroids for inductors on his original design, he substituted wire wrapped rubber washers. The electronic boards of the kit are fully assembled and tested by village women in India. The only soldering is power connectors, antenna, earphone jacks, etc. Its a great deal. If you looking to kill time the kit as delivered is $59 from India. Since introducing the kit, over 5,000 have been sold. It comes straight SSB, but is easily hackable to add CW with a change in code programming. The transmitter puts out 7 watts but can be raised to 20 watts by feeding it 25 volts.
http://www.hfsigs.com/73 Gil
