At 03:55 AM 10/3/2006, Craig Clark wrote:
>Allen
>
>In the coax business, you'll find one company will make a product and
>then the others will copy it. Belden's 9913 for instance has a number
>of copycat's and they all meet Belden's specifications. Carol & ADC
>are two that we use in lieu of Belden as they are not as expensive.
>
>You do have to be more careful of the imports. With all due respect,
>I have seen some pretty crappy RG8/213 come from a major US radio
>chain and I suspect it was a far-east import.
FWIW, it's not that it comes from the far east that makes it low
quality. It's that you can get *anything* made there: good, bad,
indifferent. And the labor costs are so low that you can actually
make money making crummy coax. At the price you can get for crummy
coax, you couldn't afford to pay U.S. mfr overheads. For "good"
coax, the price is high enough that you can make it in either place.
For coax intending to be sold in to some markets (notably US Govt),
the "Buy American Act" tends to encourage the use of domestic
suppliers. So, if I were a Belden or Carol or Alpha, I'd have my
inexpensive coax made in China and my expensive, MIL-C-17 coax made in the U.S.
The other factor that might come into play is the availability of
certficates of compliance and/or test results, both of which are
required for some buyers, and would tend to shift the "cost equation" a bit.
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
|