My underlying point is that ham radio gear of today is
more or less on par with other consumer electronics.
They ultimately share much in common technology-wise.
Comparing ham gear to other items, especially
foodstuffs and other daily commodities, while
interesting is not totally valid.
The other point I was trying to make is that any
rapidly advancing technology such as the personal
computer has been will outperform (in terms of
performance/$) more "mature" technologies that our
radios are mostly composed of.
Now if we can just recapture much the "rapidly
advancing" stuff that PC's recently have been (and
radio was from 1920-1940, give or take) we may
actually reverse the the general slowing of amateur
radio like we are now seeing.
Don't get me wrong, all of the radio manufactures have
done a good job in creating our gear at generally
reasonably prices. I just have to wonder where we
would be today if the recent model to model changes
were more revolutionary rather than evolutionary like
they have been for 25+ years?
Duane
N9DG
--- Art <rtgsdad@mchsi.com> wrote:
> If the average american household had 2.3 ham radio
> transceivers, and
> production runs were typically in the hundreds of
> thousands or millions, I
> would likely concur with the comparision to
> consumer electronics and
> computers.
>
> Any suggestions on other reasonably sophisticated
> goods we have purchased
> over the past 35 years that have productions runs as
> limited as our gear?
> It's not that that the goods need to be similar; in
> fact, due to the nearly
> non-existent economies of scale at the design and
> assembly level (not the
> component level), I think our radio manufactuers
> have done a great job. TVs
> are cheap, stereos are cheap, in no small part
> because the designs probably
> don't differ much from model to model (perhaps even
> among manufacturers) and
> the overhead can be amortized over much larger
> production runs.
>
> Art
> KC2G
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