This has been an interesting thread. It got me out of the shadows.
I haven't looked it up but in 1978 the triton was someplace around $700
stripped with no noise blanker or cw filters, analog version.
today that's about over two grand.
take all the stuff out of a a radio that is so common like dual vfos,
memories, and the other controls and dohickies is like shooting yourself in the
foot while standing in a room full of gasoline fumes.
the IC 718 is priced around $600-$700 (Before you shoot me. I didn't look up
the prices on line, but I'm close)
Even if Ten Tec could hit the $500 mark, make a few few bucks, the reviewers
would rip the rig apart simply because it DOESN'T have the thingiees and
dohickies we've come to accept as 'normal.'
Can't you just hear the QST reviewer saying something like. "The new entry
radio from Ten Tec disappointed us because it lacked the basic dual VFO design
of its competitors. To market a radio that won't allow split operation on the
HF bands is beyond our thinking."
Especially, if the competition had all those features and was only $100 more.
Sure Ford could come out with a automobile without power steering, power
brakes, power windows. No radio. A three speed manual tranny, no AC and on and
on. You'd get four wheels a steering wheel and three cylinder engine. ( I don't
recall the name of the car, but it's being build in India. That car is so
stripped down, it only has one windshield wiper.)
All the engineering costs have already been done. Just slap it together in a
old Pinto body and sell that sucker for $5k less than anyone else.
Would ford sell any? Sure I'd bet they would—until Motor Trend did the review.
As for the cost driver? I don't know. I do know that with less than one million
hams in the usa, we're just a pebble along a creek bank. Out of that many, how
many buy new radios? And with the slice of pie so thin, and your competitors
all trying for a piece of that slice, a company has to make money quickly.
besides actual production cost in labor, parts, engineering (someone still has
to prove the whole shebang works together even with other proven designs) there
are test jigs, burn in time, spare parts have to be purchased and money spent
on getting the okay from the FCC.
And after you do all that. One crappy review will doom the radio. All together
now, let's say 'Argonaut II' (To refresh your memory. QST ripped the argonaut
II because it didn't have the I/O port (among other problems they sited ) that
the Delta II had. Ten Ten added it later. That review killed the Argonaut II)
Mike, WB8VGE
SunLight Energy Systems
The Heathkit Shop
http://www.theheathkitshop.com/
J e e p
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Note: No trees were killed in the sending of this message, but a large number
of electrons were terribly inconvenienced
On Sep 26, 2010, at 9:12 PM, Louis Ciotti wrote:
> I say yes this can be build... if you strip the eagle down to bare minimum,
> and have only a the simple controls that the older rigs, how can it not be
> built. Strip off the DSP, and have fixed filters. Most of the circuitry
> has already been designed. The Output PA is done, the VFO is done, Audio
> portion is done, all that is really needed is to repackage it. I am talking
> about a basic HF transceiver here. No Split, no memories, to dual VFOs, no
> fancy multi color display, no IF port, just something simple to get people
> on the air.
>
> The Tentec Triton has the following controls:
>
> Band
> AF gain
> RF Gain
> Drive
> ALC
> Resonate
> Offset
> Mode (SSB, SSB-R, CW 1, CW 2, Tune)
> VFO
>
> With the modern designs this can be dropped to:
>
> AF Gain
> RF Gain
> ALC
> Mic Gain
> Offset
> Mode (Same modes)
> VFO
>
> That is 7 knobs.
>
> How can this not be build in a production environment and be sold for under
> $500 and make a profit? Like I said most of the electronic design work has
> been done already, so where is the real cost driver here?
>
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