Signal/One


Signal/One was a manufacturer of high performance SSB and CW HF radio communications transceivers initially based in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States.

History

Signal/One's parent company was Electronic Communications, Inc., a military division of NCR Corporation located in St. Petersburg, Florida. Key Signal/One executives were general manager Dick Ehrhorn, and project engineer Don Fowler. Beginning in the 1960s with the Signal/One CX7, the company made radios that were priced well above the competition and offered many advanced features for the time, 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.
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 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.

Collectors

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. Information available indicates there were 1152 Signal Ones built: 850 CX7, 112 CX11, 168 MS1030, 6 MilSpec1030C, 15 MilSpec1030CI Icom IC-781 conversions and 1 Milspec1030E DSP Icom IC-756 Pro conversion.