Elecraft vs. Heath.

[Darwin, Keith]

Interesting thoughts, comparing the two companies across time & space.
 
I see many similarities, but one major difference.  Elecraft has managed
to thrive against the market forces that caused Heath to sink. The
Japanese rigs dominate the field and offer lots of features for a low
price.  Well, wait, now, TenTec seems to be doing well tool.  Maybe it
isn't the same market.
 
There are indeed more hams today and we as a group have more disposable
income than 30 yrs ago.  Sheesh, many of us were in our teens back then
and are just now getting to where we can spend some serious money on ham
gear.
 
Also, I believe the ham population has become far wiser regarding gear
performance.  Back in the day, sensitivity seemed to be the driving
metric.  These days we're looking at all kinds of performance metrics.
When we examine yesterday's well-respected rigs based on today's
knowledge, we find they often come up very short.
 
A smarter customer base with more money to spend means you can build a
superior product and have luck selling it.  I believe Ikensu has missed
the boat to some extent.  By focusing of features first, performance
second, they've pushed the top performing rigs into the top category.
Average folks are left with sub-standard rigs to buy.  This has created
a hole in the market which Elecraft is doing a great job filling.
 
- Keith N1AS -
- K2 5411.ssb.100 -
- K3 wave 3 -
 
 
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[Julian, G4ILO]

I think that the Japanese manufacturers are influenced most by the
Japanese market which, from what I've read, is a lot different to the
rest of the world. Many JA hams live in apartments, and have limited
antenna options. A lot are restricted to low power. In Japan, you can
(or certainly used to be able to) buy 10W versions of radios that are
only available in 100W versions here. If you're so restricted, you may
well be more interested in knobs, buttons and appearance than in
performance specs that you can't actually get any advantage from.

--
Julian, G4ILO K2 s/n: 392  K3 s/n: ???
G4ILO's Shack: www.g4ilo.com
Ham-Directory: www.ham-directory.com


On 10/1/07, Darwin, Keith <[hidden email]> wrote:

> I believe Ikensu has missed
> the boat to some extent.  By focusing of features first, performance
> second, they've pushed the top performing rigs into the top category.
> Average folks are left with sub-standard rigs to buy.  This has created
> a hole in the market which Elecraft is doing a great job filling.
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[Vic K2VCO]

Darwin, Keith wrote:

> I see many similarities, but one major difference.  Elecraft has managed
> to thrive against the market forces that caused Heath to sink. The
> Japanese rigs dominate the field and offer lots of features for a low
> price.  Well, wait, now, TenTec seems to be doing well tool.  Maybe it
> isn't the same market.

The Japanese moved in by producing an as-good or better product at a low
price. They stayed in by taking advantage of automated manufacturing to
add features and a level of polish that the US manufacturers couldn't
come close to at the price.

Elecraft slid in alongside the Japanese by way of the QRP kit niche,
which the Japanese didn't serve. The original K2 was revolutionary: a
QRP rig that didn't compromise performance and features too much just
because it was QRP. There used to be (maybe still are) QRP-ers who get
their fun out of making contacts with minimal -- in every sense, not
just power -- equipment, and there was a lot of it around. Elecraft
realized that there were also hams who wanted relatively
high-performance QRP equipment.

But along the way people noticed that a single-conversion radio whose
major goal was something other than low parts count could provide
performance as good or better in some ways than the big boys. So the K2,
with the KPA100, became competition for them, although still pretty
unimportant competition in terms of numbers.

Elecraft made another innovation, which is the ability of the developers
to talk directly to their customers. The two-way dialog that they have
created is unique in the industry, and the Japanese manufacturers cannot
duplicate it. Possibly Tentec could, but so far they haven't.

This is not just a side issue. Think about the amount of time that Eric
and Wayne spend reading and writing on this reflector -- they wouldn't
do it if it were not essential for both development, marketing, and support.

To get back to the comparison, the K2 -- although a good performer -- is
still a "QRP rig on steroids". Because of the requirements of small size
and kit buildability (i.e., no SMT), it cannot provide the level of
features (and in some areas, performance) of the top-of-the-line radios.
The K2's basic design has been expanded, with the addition of the
KPA100, the DSP, etc. as far as it can be practically taken. Maybe a
little too far!

Now with the K3 Elecraft has leveraged its two-way communication and the
exceptional ability of its developers to take direct aim at the big
boys. I suspect that they have been more or less taken by surprise. They
will be hurt.

The Japanese manufacturers are big players in the handheld market and in
non-amateur areas. They may react by scaling down in the HF ham market,
as Kenwood did. It's unfortunate that Tentec, which as far as I know
does not have a big non-ham business, will take a hit. But that's biz biz.
--
73,
Vic, K2VCO
Fresno CA
http://www.qsl.net/k2vco
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[JT Croteau]

On 10/1/07, Vic K2VCO <[hidden email]> wrote:
> as Kenwood did. It's unfortunate that Tentec, which as far as I know
> does not have a big non-ham business, will take a hit. But that's biz biz.

Well, TenTec does have some commercial and government radio contracts
and, I believe, they have a pretty succesful enclosure and tool and
die business that can stand alone.  How lucritive?  I'm not sure.

--
JT Croteau, N1ESE - Manchester, NH (FN42gx)
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[Darwin, Keith]

Vic,

You've hit on a major factor in my recent decision to order a K3.  I
believe we are on the eve of a shift in the market.  I believe at $2000,
the K3 is really going to win a lot of hearts.  I wanted to get my order
on the books as late as possible before that flood hits.  I suspect
demand for the rig will be high.  I'm hoping there will be a bit of a
lag.  So far K3 sales have (I'm guessing here) largely been within the
family, to current Elecraft customers who are upgrading / supplementing.
But, once these rigs hit the air and people start winning contests with
them, and once ARRL tests them and gives them their "blessing", we'll
see demand go up.

I was going to wait for a while and order next spring or a year from now
after the initial flood subsides, but I'm not sure it will subside that
quickly.

One thing is for sure, it is exciting to be watching from *almost*
behind the scenes, as a new rig comes into being.  I can't WAIT to see
the QST review and to see how the K3 is received by the ham market.

Maybe in a couple of years we'll see a hostile takeover as Elecraft buys
Kenwood :-)

- Keith N1AS -
- K2 5411.ssb.100 -
- K3 Wave 3 -
 

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email]
[mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Vic K2VCO

Now with the K3 Elecraft has leveraged its two-way communication and the
exceptional ability of its developers to take direct aim at the big
boys. I suspect that they have been more or less taken by surprise. They
will be hurt.

The Japanese manufacturers are big players in the handheld market and in
non-amateur areas. They may react by scaling down in the HF ham market,
as Kenwood did. It's unfortunate that Tentec, which as far as I know
does not have a big non-ham business, will take a hit. But that's biz
biz.
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[Stephen W. Kercel]

I used to live in Seymour TN, the next town over from Sevierville,
and I knew quite a few of the management and engineering people at
Ten Tec. I cannot say what their present situation is, but back when
I knew them, Tec Tec made its money from its Government radio
contracts and from custom machining in its tool room. They
consistently lost money on their ham gear. They stayed in the ham
business because 1) the top management were active hams and supported
ham radio, and 2) they made enough profit from their other operations
that they could afford to subsidize their ham manufacturing.
73

Steve Kercel
AA4AK


At 12:17 PM 10/1/2007, JT Croteau wrote:

>On 10/1/07, Vic K2VCO <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > as Kenwood did. It's unfortunate that Tentec, which as far as I know
> > does not have a big non-ham business, will take a hit. But that's biz biz.
>
>Well, TenTec does have some commercial and government radio contracts
>and, I believe, they have a pretty succesful enclosure and tool and
>die business that can stand alone.  How lucritive?  I'm not sure.
>
>--
>JT Croteau, N1ESE - Manchester, NH (FN42gx)
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[Roelof Bakker]

Hello Vic,

>
But along the way people noticed that a single-conversion radio whose
major goal was something other than low parts count could provide
performance as good or better in some ways than the big boys.
<

This is a fine example that more is not always better.
One should assume that a double, triple or quadruple superhet receiver is
superior to a single conversion design. Regarding strong signal handling
capabilities this is not the case. The reason one went away from single
conversion is that an economical general coverage receiver needs a high IF.
Quality narrow filters at e.g. 45 MHz can be made, but are far more
expensive than filters at a lower frequency. Hence the choice for a single
wide and cheap filter at the first IF.

However nothing dramatic is on order with a double conversion design with a
high first IF, when proper gain distribution is maintained. Non of the major
players have been able to address this issue right, but for one: AOR with
the AR7030. This receiver ranks number four in the Sherwood Engineering
Receiver Test Data List.
This is achieved by an excellent active second mixer, the now obsolete
Plessy SL6440.
The low noise local oscillator completes an at the time innovative design. I
own one and will not part from it.

The receiver of the K2 is a simple and straight forward design. That the K2
performs better than the competition has much to say about the (lack of)
performance of the major brands. In Dutch we have a saying that goes like
"among the blind one-eye is King".(I know someone who is in contesting and
DX-peditioning. He told me that on an un-sponsored DX-pedition the group
prefers to use K2's).

In my view the strength of the K2 is, besides a sound RF-design, contained
in the software. I have built quite a few receivers here, but I seem to come
back to the K2 again and again. It simply is a joy to use. Some of you seem
to call this mo-jo.

Roelof Bakker, pa0rdt
Middelburg, Netherlands
JO11tm






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[Matthew D. Fuller-2]

On Mon, Oct 01, 2007 at 08:57:30AM -0700 I heard the voice of
Vic K2VCO, and lo! it spake thus:

>
> Elecraft made another innovation, which is the ability of the
> developers to talk directly to their customers. The two-way dialog
> that they have created is unique in the industry, and the Japanese
> manufacturers cannot duplicate it. Possibly Tentec could, but so far
> they haven't.
>
> This is not just a side issue. Think about the amount of time that
> Eric and Wayne spend reading and writing on this reflector -- they
> wouldn't do it if it were not essential for both development,
> marketing, and support.

On this, see some of Clay Shirky's writings about Audience vs.
Community, e.g:

    Though both are held together in some way by communication, an
    audience is typified by a one-way relationship between sender and
    receiver, and by the disconnection of its members from one another
    -- a one-to-many pattern. In a community, by contrast, people
    typically send and receive messages, and the members of a
    community are connected to one another, not just to some central
    outlet -- a many-to-many pattern.   [1]


Both the channel between the developers and users, and the channel
among the users, are vital bits of the Elecraft Community.  The big
manufacturers probably couldn't duplicate it if they tried, but they
wouldn't want to try:

    As a result of these differences, communities have strong upper
    limits on size, while audiences can grow arbitrarily large. Put
    another way, the larger a group held together by communication
    grows, the more it must become like an audience -- largely
    disconnected and held together by communication traveling from
    center to edge -- because increasing the number of people in a
    group weakens communal connection.    [1]


Audience vs. Community isn't Good vs. Bad, they're just two
alternatives.  Audience gives you scale, which is what a company like
Icom wants.

Elecraft [this is all speculative on my part, btw, but I think it's
reasonably accurate] is perfectly willing to give up the scale of
being a Big Company and Selling Lots Of Units.  Sure, they're in
business to make money (otherwise, you're not in business), and all
else being equal more is better, but all else isn't equal.  Due to
either a particular choice of market niche, or pre-existing biases of
the developers (and probably both), the dialogue between developers
and users is desired.  Due to the nature of the products (and thus the
people using them), the dialogue among users fruitfully occurs.  And
it's due to the combination, the overlapping, the mutually-reinforcing
of the two components, that Elecraft has a Community, rather than an
Audience.

In a sense, to really "go after the big boys" on volume (as opposed to
just on technology), Elecraft would have to end up with a much larger
Audience than they currently have.  That wouldn't necessarily spell
the end of the Community (the two can exist somewhat independently;
the large Audience buying and using the products, and the smaller
Community interacting), but it would certainly change the dynamics of
the situation.  Currently, the Community is a significant portion
(maybe not a majority, but certainly a large hunk) of the customer
base; after such a change, it would no longer be.  An interesting
sociological study.




[1] <http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html>
    Some other essays on the site touch on similar topics, but this is
    the most topical.  He talks about communities in a somewhat
    different setting than this relatively specific and technical one,
    but it's still good general musings.




--
Matthew Fuller, N3TZJ
<[hidden email]>
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[Bill VanAlstyne W5WVO]

Julian G4ILO wrote:

> I think that the Japanese manufacturers are influenced most by the
> Japanese market which, from what I've read, is a lot different to the
> rest of the world. Many JA hams live in apartments, and have limited
> antenna options. A lot are restricted to low power. In Japan, you can
> (or certainly used to be able to) buy 10W versions of radios that are
> only available in 100W versions here. If you're so restricted, you may
> well be more interested in knobs, buttons and appearance than in
> performance specs that you can't actually get any advantage from.

I think Julian has nailed it here, in that the Ikensu strategy has always been
essentially marketing-driven, and their experience base derives primarily from
their domestic market. But I don't think the mass appeal of radios with a sexy
appearance and sub-optimal performance is limited to Japan. We have plenty of
"substantially underinformed" (trying to be charitable here) amateur operators
right here in the USA, and I think the Ikensu features-first strategy will
continue to work in this market. Will the K3 impact sales of their top-end
super-premium transceivers? Probably. But how many of those radios do they
actually sell? Not many in comparison to the number of low-end and mid-range
transceivers they sell.

And of course the VHF/UHF FM marketplace is huge in comparison to the
high-performance HF marketplace as well, especially in this country where the
majority of new hams settle into a niche on a local 2M repeater and never go
beyond it.

So I wouldn't worry about Ikensu being badly damaged.  :-)  Not that we would
anyway!

Bill / W5WVO

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[Goody K3NG]

Case in point, how many Icom/Yaesu/Kenwood rigs do you see dedicated to
220 Mhz or even multi-band VHF/UHF rigs with 220 capability?

Julian G4ILO wrote:
> I think that the Japanese manufacturers are influenced most by the
> Japanese market which, from what I've read, is a lot different to the
> rest of the world.
>
>  
--
Blog: http://thek3ngreport.blogspot.com/

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