[Elecraft] Where is Elecraft Support ?

[Fred Jensen]

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