K4: How to escape the niche?
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What niche?
Back in olden days, someone would use "ain't bottom" to refer to a patch of land up aways from the river, a kind of pejorative. Until, that is, somebody figured out how to grow corn on it. The parallel perjorative for Elecraft and its customer base would have been tinkerers and kit builders, and cranky and hard-to-please if reading the reflector email, true enough at some point for about all of us. Definitely anathema to the short term high leverage model all the rage these days. "Niche" from them is just a one word summary pejorative. I'd be more inclined to refer to the Elecraft user base as grown from a niche. The run-up to K3, the K2's, K1's, etc, and the word of mouth user/contributor network, the foundation for launching the K3, wasn't just laying around to be discovered. It was grown and tended, same way one grows an orchard from seed. The way one turns tinkerers and kit builders, and cranky and hard-to-please into loyal contributors and users is a long-term intentional responsiveness that allows user input a voice in setting company directions. The high-end technical part takes some serious high end talent on the Elecraft benches. Arguably one can find that in a lot of places, including Kenicaesu. But practically speaking, the Elecraft high-end expertise includes a significant high-end technical segment in their user base, a segment that is ever growing via the kit method, fix it yourself, modify forever culture amplified with the internet email and reflector networking. "Niche" just isn't technically accurate any more. Other manufacturers may mimick the technical advances (I hope they do), but most are completely confused or turned off when it comes to understanding the networked, interactive, constributory nature of Elecraft's users. We had four K3's at NY4A for CQ WWDX CW. No one is looking back to MP's or Orions. The lone Orion owner in the crowd was satisfied that the K3 was at least as good as his Orion, He had no trouble driving the K3, whereas in prior contests the Orion drove rest of us to distraction tripping up on the menus. Nothing but the real stuff could unite that crowd of technical discordants on a single radio. I don't really care what Kenicaesu does, just so long as their new offerings don't have key clicks or splatter. I know that it will be a very rare day when an email I send to their headquarters is actually read with some intention of dealing with its contents. JA1MP has passed on and, sadly, some kind of spark at the top went with him. As to a "K4", or better, "K3+" should be a box of the same height and depth and style as the K3, with a width TBD (5 or 6"?), that has an LCD screen (4x3 touchscreen like Garmins, etc?) as it's front. It should contain an aux computer sufficient to do the functions of panadapter and whatever else might be useful. It should be able to contain an Elecraft switching power supply for the K3/K3+ combo good for full RTTY transmit output. It should be able to be bolted to one or the other side of the K3, by removing the K3 side cover and replacing it with the uncovered side of the K3+, making it into a seamless single unit. The method of constructing the K3 should make this easy. Or it should be able to be set separate with its own side panels. The enclosure itself would allow the extension of the K3 style case for projects in the same fashion as K2 owners have used the EC2, while allowing K3+ ready-built combos for the less adventuresome. 73, Guy _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [hidden email] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com |
Re: How to escape the niche?
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At 04:43 PM 1/3/2009, Guy Olinger, K2AV wrote:
>What niche? very well put Guy ,,, I hope they also provide parts to have a front facing spkr./s.. so we could have a matching front speakers,,,, I suppose if you could integrate into the same chassis that would be nice also,,,, could be narrow jobs,,, just tall enough for the same hi efficiency spkr now used,,,,bonus bigger box could = more lows... Vertically narrow,for side use/mount, or laid horizontally both spkrs on top on k3.... maybe another few pieces of steel for a "wide as a k3" dual spkr enclosure,,,, space in center for controls & leds of optional PS... Hmmmm I may have to do this myself,,,, bill _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [hidden email] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com |
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_______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [hidden email] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com |
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