Elecraft

Where is Elecraft Support ?

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k6dgw

Re: Where is Elecraft Support ?

It is dependent on scale, David. The USAF flies large fleets of a
number of different A/C and has in-place materiel warehousing and
distribution facilities. They also have extensive records on
"requirements," the failure rate of components. So, for them, and some
civilian A/C maintenance facilities, it makes super sense. Many A/C
have thousands of flying hours left after the parts supply dries up.
B-52's first flew in 1952, and they still are. Almost nothing on them
is original anymore.

My suggestion was just a feeble attempt at humor however. I guess it
was even more feeble than I thought. [:=)

73,
Fred ["Skip"] K6DGW
Sparks NV DM09dn
Washoe County

On 3/10/2020 9:49 PM, David Gilbert wrote:

>
> That makes zero sense.
>
> What are you going to make a "Lifetime Buy" on? A synth? A front
> panel? A tuner? You might as well buy a second (or third) rig since
> you don't have a clue what might fail in the future, and if you buy
> all those things separately (or worse yet the individual components
> that go into them) you better plan on working an extra year or so
> before retiring.
>
> By the way, I spent my career in the semiconductor business
> (operations manager) and I can say with great authority that many
> discontinued devices had no business being offered for sale in the
> first place. Companies (not just mine) would often develop a new
> product line and bin sort for different ranges of performance.
> Component A might have a 30% yield but have better specs than
> Component B that had a 90+% yield. Component A would get designed
> into more demanding applications and sell for a higher price, while
> Component B was higher volume, sold for less, and essentially
> subsidized the yields for Component A. That worked fine until
> somebody decided they wanted a LOT of Component A, or the demand for
> Component B dried up. No matter what anyone says, the market won't
> simply bail you out by paying you three times more money for Component
> A when you get in trouble, and after a while you have no choice but to
> announce a discontinuance. I strongly suspect that's what happened to
> the tight tolerance caps Elecraft used in the K1 band modules.
>
> When I was the ops manager, I tried my best to squash that kind of
> practice. Either make the process capable or face reality.
>
> 73,
> Dave AB7E

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Alan Bloom

Re: Where is Elecraft Support ?

My experience with lifetime buys was at HP/Agilent. They would only do
such a buy when the manufacturer announced a part discontinuance. You
then figure out how many parts you need for the expected product
lifetime plus spares for future repairs and buy that many to put in stores.

It's a pain in the neck because it can be expensive to store all that
unused inventory and it's hard to estimate product lifetime years in
advance. So if possible you try to find a substitute part, even if that
may involve some re-design. But sometimes a lifetime buy is the only
reasonable solution.

Alan N1AL

On 3/11/20 12:10 PM, Fred Jensen wrote:

> It is dependent on scale, David. The USAF flies large fleets of a
> number of different A/C and has in-place materiel warehousing and
> distribution facilities.
>
> On 3/10/2020 9:49 PM, David Gilbert wrote:
>>
>> That makes zero sense.
>>
>> What are you going to make a "Lifetime Buy" on? A synth? A front
>> panel? A tuner? You might as well buy a second (or third) rig since
>> you don't have a clue what might fail in the future, and if you buy
>> all those things separately (or worse yet the individual components
>> that go into them) you better plan on working an extra year or so
>> before retiring.

jeff stai-2

Re: Where is Elecraft Support ?

Continuing the OT parade, I have one.

When I first joined the ASIC team at Western Digital I was assigned to
complete a SCSI interface chip and get it into manufacturing. It was a
design that they had decided not to produce... except for the fact that one
frisky salesman sold it to an passenger jet manufacturer.

Said mfr needed, for the whole lifetime of the jet in question, something
like 30 units. But since there was a contract signed, we made it.

73 jeff wk6i

On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 1:19 PM Alan <[hidden email]> wrote:

> My experience with lifetime buys was at HP/Agilent. They would only do
> such a buy when the manufacturer announced a part discontinuance. You
> then figure out how many parts you need for the expected product
> lifetime plus spares for future repairs and buy that many to put in stores.
>
> It's a pain in the neck because it can be expensive to store all that
> unused inventory and it's hard to estimate product lifetime years in
> advance. So if possible you try to find a substitute part, even if that
> may involve some re-design. But sometimes a lifetime buy is the only
> reasonable solution.
>
> Alan N1AL
>
>
> On 3/11/20 12:10 PM, Fred Jensen wrote:
> > It is dependent on scale, David. The USAF flies large fleets of a
> > number of different A/C and has in-place materiel warehousing and
> > distribution facilities.
> >
> > On 3/10/2020 9:49 PM, David Gilbert wrote:
> >>
> >> That makes zero sense.
> >>
> >> What are you going to make a "Lifetime Buy" on? A synth? A front
> >> panel? A tuner? You might as well buy a second (or third) rig since
> >> you don't have a clue what might fail in the future, and if you buy
> >> all those things separately (or worse yet the individual components
> >> that go into them) you better plan on working an extra year or so
> >> before retiring.
>
> ______________________________________________________________
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--
Jeff Stai ~ WK6I ~ [hidden email]
RTTY op at W7RN
Twisted Oak Winery ~ http://www.twistedoak.com/
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David Gilbert

Re: Where is Elecraft Support ?

I used to do the same thing. If we had somehow gotten a customer
dependent upon a part that was virtually impossible to make, and if he
promised not to design it into any new products, and if his volume
requirements were limited enough, I would just have my folks make a
special run and give him the parts gratis. Sharing the pain works wonders.

73,
Dave AB7E

On 3/11/2020 5:19 PM, Jeff Stai wrote:

> Continuing the OT parade, I have one.
>
> When I first joined the ASIC team at Western Digital I was assigned to
> complete a SCSI interface chip and get it into manufacturing. It was a
> design that they had decided not to produce... except for the fact that one
> frisky salesman sold it to an passenger jet manufacturer.
>
> Said mfr needed, for the whole lifetime of the jet in question, something
> like 30 units. But since there was a contract signed, we made it.
>
> 73 jeff wk6i
>
>

Bill Frantz

Re: Where is Elecraft Support ?

In reply to this post by Alan Bloom

Not being a hardware guy I may be a bit confused, but my vague
memory from the 1980s, is that manufacturers of that era would
not use a part that didn't have a second source. This and other
posts indicate that this policy no longer exists. Too bad. It
might help with all kinds of supply problems.

73 Bill AE6JV

On 3/7/20 at 3:15 PM, [hidden email] (Alan) wrote:

>Some years ago when I worked for HP, I designed a (new at that
>time) TI 320C10 DSP chip into a new HP instrument. There was
>a rather odd piece of glue logic that I needed to implement the
>design. I called up TI and they assured me there were no
>plans to discontinue the part.
>
>You guessed it. Just as we were ready to go into production
>the part was discontinued. I had to scramble to figure out
>some other means to perform the function (which meant a PC
>board turn).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Frantz | Concurrency is hard. 12 | Periwinkle
(408)348-7900 | out 10 programmers get it | 150 Rivermead
Rd #235
www.pwpconsult.com | wrong. - Jeff Frantz | Peterborough,
NH 03458

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David Gilbert

Re: Where is Elecraft Support ?

As a supplier of components, it was often true that it was difficult to
get designed in with a sole sourced device, but that "rule" was violated
over and over again. Sometimes customers were blindsided by design
engineers who somehow sneaked sole sourced devices into their system
(not every company had military level supply channel control), and often
it was simply the case that some critical product function was not
possible without using a sole sourced device. And as you might imagine,
dual sourced devices often turned into sole sourced devices when one of
the suppliers decided to quit making it, or they went out of business.

Before statistical control methods like Six Sigma, lots of suppliers (my
company included) didn't really even have a good handle on whether they
were capable of dependably making a device or not. During my early years
I remember a lot of wafer fab guys "tweaking the process" on an almost
daily basis in reaction to normal process variation ... which of course
actually created greater oscillations in parameter values than if they
had just stayed at their desks. At my company, we literally, and I mean
literally, had to reassign some older engineers in both the wafer fabs
and the assembly factories because they refused to stop "tweaking" until
they actually had done the work to reduce the normal process variations.

73,
Dave AB7E

On 3/13/2020 8:13 PM, Bill Frantz wrote:

> Not being a hardware guy I may be a bit confused, but my vague memory
> from the 1980s, is that manufacturers of that era would not use a part
> that didn't have a second source. This and other posts indicate that
> this policy no longer exists. Too bad. It might help with all kinds of
> supply problems.
>
> 73 Bill AE6JV
>
> On 3/7/20 at 3:15 PM, [hidden email] (Alan) wrote:
>
>> Some years ago when I worked for HP, I designed a (new at that time)
>> TI 320C10 DSP chip into a new HP instrument. There was a rather odd
>> piece of glue logic that I needed to implement the design. I called
>> up TI and they assured me there were no plans to discontinue the part.
>>
>> You guessed it. Just as we were ready to go into production the part
>> was discontinued. I had to scramble to figure out some other means
>> to perform the function (which meant a PC board turn).
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Bill Frantz        | Concurrency is hard. 12   | Periwinkle
> (408)348-7900      | out 10 programmers get it | 150 Rivermead Rd #235
> www.pwpconsult.com | wrong.      - Jeff Frantz | Peterborough, NH 03458
>
> ______________________________________________________________
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>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
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> Message delivered to [hidden email]