(a much more readable version)
Greetings Friends and Fellow Ten Tec Enthusiasts,
I wanted to update you on what is happening in Sevierville. The Smokey
Mountains are literally fogged in with smoke in some places as Tennessee
hasmany wild fires burning. I was there two weeks ago and have never
experienced anything like it. Driving down Jellico Mountain on I75 it
became literally IFR conditions with near zero visibility from the smoke.
As some of you know Ten Tec has been occupying office condominium space
behind the site of the former factory were now a Wal-Mart Express is
sitting. This site is not appropriate for our needs. Starting last week,
we are moving out of this location into a more industrial friendly
space.Unfortunately this location is not zoned for commercial walk in
traffic, so the days of someone showing up at the factory door
unfortunately have come to an end. After an entire year of searching for
any possible opportunity to move, this is all we have been able to come up
with. Commercial real estate is completely out of control in
Sevierville county because of the tourist industry, and unless we have
about a half million dollars to invest in the factory location you can just
forget about it. Ten Tec is"too small" to receive any incentive, tax
breaks or help from the local so called "Economic Development" office. My
opinion is that the State and local government of Tennessee is about as
economically unfriendly to a small business or start up business as is
possible. For example, in other counties in TN the standard is to create
10 new jobs to get any incentive. Sevier County arbitrarily requires 25
jobs. By my calculations, 25 jobs would be around a million dollar pay
roll if the jobs averaged 15 dollars an hour to the employee with a 25%
more overhead to the employer. Any business having that kind of payroll
better have about 10 million in gross receipts which would put it at DOUBLE
the IRS definition of a small business and QUADRUPLE the IRS definition of
a micro business, so it is obvious that the economic development offices do
not have any mandate whatsoever to support or help ANY small business
reason the scale of an individual person's finances. The fact that Ten
Tec must have contributed millions of tax dollars to the local economy over
the last 50 years means nothing. In many states, these economic
development offices are partially funded by the local Chamber of Commerce.
It is my opinion these offices function as intelligence gathering units to
forewarn their members of any possible competitor entering their area. If
small business is truly the economic growth engine of the United States it
is apparent to me why we have growth problems if we depend on these
organizations to help us as individuals. It seems ironic that the company
named TEN TEC for Tennessee Technologies can't get any assistance at all in
Tennessee considering the state's advertising of their "Tennessee
Technology Initiative". If you are wondering why I wrote all this above
it is to head off the endless string of expert recommendation that I
contact TVA and the local economic development. I’ve done it and nobody is
going to help Ten Tec in the State of Tennessee.
To get back on track, I stated above we are moving the remainder of this
month.You all know what that means. Service will be slow this month.
Robert decided not to have you send in radios this month so we wouldn't
have to move them. There is no cause for alarm or speculation. Service
will continue just as soon as we are moved. I hear and read all kinds of
gossip and complaints and this and that about our service, and none of it
even close to accurate. We have serviced hundreds of radios this year and
have a bunch of happy customers. You will see in the reflector some guy
complaining or saying he is worried and then five people saying everything
was fine. I'm so sick of it. Really it is so frustrating, especially when
some of you call or write me up in Ohio about your twenty year old radio.
I can't help you. I'm not in Tennessee. The people there run things and do
their job essentially under Boyd's supervision. I don't want to sound
condescending or aloof or unreasonable or unfriendly but please see this
from my perspective.There are thousands of you and one of me. I am
responsible to run this company and pay the people who work here whose
families depend on me. I am an electrical engineer and my time needs to be
spent getting the new products developed and out the door, not with a dial
string for your old thing that I neither sold you or received any benefit
of selling to you. Can you directly call the president of Icom? Does Eric
answer the telephone when you call Elecraft? It is just not possible for
me to answer every email and every telephone call about service issues. If
you call me at Dishtronix and leave a message asking me to call you about
your Ten Tec I'm not returning your call. If I answer I'm going to tell
you we have put up the procedure that you email service@tentec.com. Yes, I
have a telephone at Ten Tec and no, you can’t have it. We are short
staffed because we do not have sales volume at this time to support a large
overhead. This way, Robert can go through all of the email and respond at
one time in the morning,then spend the rest of the day shipping radios and
parts orders without being interrupted. He is there three days a week, so
you don't get answers on Monday or Friday. Sure, I know some of you don't
like it. There is no need to tell me about it. I don't like it either, but
until we start having a lot more cash flow that is the way it has going to
have to be. For those that complain about how long it is taking, please
understand this is a million dollar endeavor and money like that just
doesn’t grow on trees, at least for me. Of course any of you wealthy
gentlemen looking for a good cause to donate some money too - I would love
to have the cash on hand to turn things around tomorrow. Until then I’ll be
working 16 hours a day seven days a week with no days off and scrimp and
save and spend carefully and build up slowly just like every other hard
working guy has to do.
What I am going to try to do next is set up sort of an email hotline for
critical cases with Bob if he will do it. I just thought of this and have
to talk to him about this.
OK,enough about that. Let’s get on to some better stuff. Many of you know
that under RFC and RKR Ten Tec quit doing their PCB assembly in house.
Those of you who have known me over the decades at Dishtronix know my shop
suffered heating issues that made it tough for the machinery to run in the
end of January to February arctic blasts. Well, I have a new and very nice
double insulated, heated and cooled free span metal building where I've
moved my PCB assembly operation and this is something I'm very excited
about. The building has a metal skin totally covering the inside with good
overhead fluorescent lighting and conduit encased electrical outlets every
12 feet around the perimeter. I have retired the older Contact Systems
placement machines in favor of newer MYDATA (Micronics Sweden) placement
machines. I installed the first MY9 machine this last June and have been
using it to build boards for the RX340 commercial orders we have been
fulfilling. Ten Tec did have a MY9 when they were building boards in
house. The MYDATA machines are the choice for high mix medium volume
production, especially when equipped with the Agilis quick change feeder
system. Feeders usually cost more than the machines in this business, and
I've been growing my collection all year. I am about a third of the way to
having the collection of feeders I would like to have. Earlier this month I
got lucky and was able to purchase the bar code software which will allow
me to load and unload components from the machine by just scanning with the
bar code reader, and it is done offline. It will help with inventory
control and component management which is a real nightmare considering Ten
Tec has over 7000 different line items.
The MY9 machine has a capability to hold up to 96 different components and
has a single mounting head. As I write this, an air ride big rig is getting
closer and closer to Ohio hauling a MY19 machine in from San Francisco
which can hold an additional 160 different components (total 256 8 mm
tapes) and has 8 mounting heads! Hopefully this machine will be brought
online successfully and not be damaged or in bad shape as I've bought it
sight unseen. I've also moved the 8 zone, lead free capable, pin chain
conveyor equipped Electrovert Bravo 8105 oven to the new building last
weekend. This gives us the capability to process double sided surface
mount and the ability to reliably process BGA chips. I've also purchased
this summer but not yet installed an X ray machine to do 100% inspection of
the BGA reflow soldering process. With the existing equipment (stencil
printers, board washers,etc.) this will give us what I believe is the most
well equipped and modern PCB manufacturing of any amateur radio
manufacturer in North America. I believe the other guys outsource their
board assembly. It may be the smart thing to do, but I personally prefer
to buy and house my own components in house and to have total control over
my assembly process. I find it requires more time to outsource and get
constant bids for things like this than to just own the equipment and do it
myself. I think you get a better product at less cost. Of course the best
reason in my opinion for doing it all in house is I can do as small of a
production run as I want, IF I am willing to spend the time to set up and
do it. Hence the decision for the quick change capability of the MYDATA
system. So, all in all what this means is the Phoenix is rising. I am
rebuilding Ten Tec and preparing to do some serious manufacturing,which
brings me to my next point.
Most of you know we have been bogged down and overwhelmed with the
commercial side of our business this last year since I officially assumed
the helm in January. With trying to replenish the hard to get / long lead
time / last time buy / obsolete parts, rebuild the PCB assembly
operations, moving,and so on we just haven't had the horsepower to build
any amateur transceivers. Well, the good news is we have caught up on our
commercial contracts. Be glad we did this. You know all the stuff I wrote
about above? The commercial contracts paid for that. Without this TEN TEC
would not exist right now. We are at a very important cross roads right
now. What do we do next?
Some of you know we are developing new products. Those are still off on
the horizon. What I need to know is how many of you would purchase Eagles
if they were available? I'd like to do a run of 100 of them next. It is a
great radio. I like mine every bit as well as my Orion II. The DSP
function is superb.
We have to talk a little bit about price. When the Eagle was launched it
was a $2100 radio with no accessories. You all know the story of the blow
out sales and the liquidation as the previous owners sold everything that
wasn't nailed down on their way out. Some of you got fully loaded radios
for $1299 or whatever. You know they didn't even cover their assembly cost
on that, right? Some of you got real bargains. Of course only the last 35
radios or something were sold at that price but you get the point. You
will never see a price like that again. If I have to sell and Eagle at
that I will close and lock the doors and be done with it. A strip model
needs to sell at 1699 at least. The more you are willing to pay for a
radio the faster the new radios can come out. We want to build radios and
sell them so we can keep the production team in place so we can meet the
demand when the new radios come out. Everything we do tomorrow depends on
how much you support us today.
I'm certain some of you have heard that I and two partners acquired Alpha
and that I've been officially at the Helm since August. It is a separate
company from Dishtronix / TEN TEC. Of course I will be building the
circuit boards for those products as well. I'm after something business
people call economy of scale, essentially having enough product flow
through the doors to totally occupy the machines and infrastructure. I'll
be making a post on that reflector as well to update those customers also.
By the way, we do have RX340s available to build on short notice now.
Let me close by wishing you all a Happy and Safe Thanksgiving holiday, one
of my favorites and of course the reason I see my dentist in November for
my pre-feast tune up. The Sevierville team and I appreciate your support
for TenTec, where we believe we are once again Making America Great - One
Radio at a Time.
VY 73 DE MIKE N8WFF
On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 9:27 AM, Jim Reisert AD1C <jjreisert@alum.mit.edu>
wrote:
> A slightly more readable version (but not much more):
>
> http://lists.contesting.com/_tentec/2016-11/msg00154.html
>
> --
> Jim Reisert AD1C, <jjreisert@alum.mit.edu>, http://www.ad1c.us
> _______________________________________________
> YCCC Reflector mailto:yccc@contesting.com
> Yankee Clipper Contest Club http://www.yccc.org
> Reflector Info: http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/yccc
>
>
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