[Elecraft] K4: How to escape the niche?

[Guy Olinger, K2AV]

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