[Elecraft] Buying a K4 in UK

[G3WPF]

OK Jim.

Yes, Doug has expressed his positive experiences and that is fine.  I 
would still rather travel one hour within this country to get things 
sorted.  Your experience of Kenwood in the USD is a mirror image of the 
situation here with Elecraft.  It seems a characteristic of US 
manufactured equipment over here going back to Heath, Drake, Swan etc 
which was always fraught with difficulties.  As a result, it's always 
seemed to be considered as a "niche" market.  I just hope it can change 
in the future. At the moment, I am keeping my fingers crossed that my 2 
K3 rigs continue to operate as I'm not inclined to buy a K4 in the 
present circumstances.  Based on previous experiences with electronic 
equipment, the prognosis is not very good - a problem always seems to 
arise at some stage (irrespective of the manufacturer).

73

Reg
G3WPF



On 03/08/2023 23:04, Jim Brown wrote:
> On 8/3/2023 2:29 AM, G3WPF via Elecraft wrote:
>> You are still missing the point Jim.
>>
>> The choice is simple.  The customer can either go through the risk 
>> and rigmarole of conducting their business direct with Elecraft, 
>> several thousand miles away or driving an hour or so to buy/have 
>> serviced/repaired a broadly equivalent rig from other manufacturers.
>
> I haven't misunderstood at all -- indeed, I WOULD consider that issue. 
> And I suspect that if Elecraft does not currently have a relationship 
> with distributor or service in EU, it's because they don't know of a 
> suitable firm.
>
> That said, EI2CN has responded to this concern in a positive way.
>
> And this observation from my experience: several years ago, I bought a 
> Kenwood D74A VHF/UHF talkie from a US vendor, hoping it would be a 
> replacement for the TH-F6As that I've used and loved for twenty years. 
> The user interface was so bad that I had to refer to the manual (a 
> pdf, which I printed most of) to do almost anything, so I rarely used 
> it, sticking the TH-F6A instead.
>
> When I eventually did pick it up for some reason, it was dead, and out 
> of warranty. In this country of ~340 million souls, Kenwood lists only 
> one service center, and it took nearly a month to get an address or 
> contact info. I've long considered Kenwood as the best of the JA rigs.
>
> 73, Jim K9YC
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