K4 Update Oct 9

[Eric Swartz - WA6HHQ]

To answer the big question, yes we started shipping small numbers of our
first regular production K4s in late September. :-)   We are building more
K4s now in production and we expect more to start going out late next week
or the following week.

Our production rate will be slower than we want through the rest of October
and early November as we fine tune everything
and navigate intermittent supplier delays, temporary production stoppages
etc. and as we continue to tune our production and test processes. As the
K4 production rate gets stabilized we will also be able to give better
estimates when individual orders will ship. Please be patient with us as we
work through this.

One note - initial K4 orders on 5/17 were huge, both on the Web and at
Dayton. (As were ordered the following weeks and months..) Even the first
shipping group K4 orders with large deposits from that first day were so
large that they will take some time to ship. We will email or call to
notify everyone as their order gets close.

It's been a challenge dodging all of the unexpected obstacles we've
encountered the last several months. COVID-19 shutdowns, the CA Fires and
the resulting impacts on our staff, suppliers and overall efficiency have
been challenging.  Many of our team are working from home due to COVID-19
requirements (including Wayne and myself, engineering and most of our sales
staff). The CA fires had a major impact in late August and through
September. Two of our engineers lost their homes and radios, and a third
came close, with the fire coming within a mile of his location. Fortunately
everyone is OK and back at work and there is no ongoing fire threat
locally.

The Elecrft HQ and factory in Watsonville is far from where the active
fires were and was never at risk. It's in an open industrial park far from
the forests and near the coast. We have also reconfigured the factory and
test area layouts for safe operation with regard to proper social
distancing, better air flow and good workstation isolation between workers.
Our inventory is safe and our production and test teams are hard at
work there.

Several of our local suppliers (machine shops etc.) had mandatory
evacuations for several weeks as a precaution during the local fires.
Fortunately their facilities were undamaged, but that has increased delays
getting parts finished and delivered to us as they restart.  Each day
presents new challenges. So far, we've been able to work through each
new surprise.

We are in good financial shape, with plenty of funds to run our operation
and fund the K4 ramp up. Amazingly, even during the COVID shut downs in the
spring we continued to receive orders for all of our products at a strong
rate. It looks like the extra time everyone had while staying at home has
increased interest in ham radio! As a result we are still running with a
strong backlog of orders for our regular products, which are shipping daily
in addition to the K4. This has helped enormously.

Thank you to everyone for your support.

73,
Eric
*elecraft.com <http://elecraft.com>*
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