[Premium-Rx] Premium-Rx Digest, Vol 155, Issue 8

[Bob Betts]

Terry and All:I have read a summary of the 8711 vs. 340 contract competition (purportedly written by an ex TT employee) that in the 11th hour, the author of the government RFP issued a variance for features/functions that W-J had already had in their knowledge base and that TT had not considered since the added requirements were not known originally. Consequently, TT was not able to develop the added requirements and W-J became the de-facto supplier from RFP to RFQ. It has been asserted in the writings that "maybe" W-J had some inside influence in these actions. It's all conjecture, but certainly not out of the realm of possibility. Do you have any info along these lines?

Bob




NOTE Pls add backup address to your phone book: rwbetts at yahoo.com

http://www.bobsamerica.com  http://www.youtube.com/n1kpr 

Engineering: Where Enigma meets Paradox 

  

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2019 11:34:44 -0400
From: watkins-johnson at terryo.org
To: "Premium-Rx at mailman.qth.net" <premium-rx at mailman.qth.net>
Subject: Re: [Premium-Rx] WJ8711A-3 special government edition to sale
Message-ID:
    <b8d50e8879eef68981e84670d2b67974.squirrel at emailmg.ipower.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1

The RX-340 and WJ-8711/HF-1000 were competing designs submitted in
response to a government proposal.  Watkins-Johnson won the contract and
Ten-Tec grumbled loud and long afterward.  The constraints of the RFP are
why the front panels look similar.

To my knowledge, which is based on interviews with more than twenty WJ
engineers, Ten-Tec and Watkins-Johnson have never worked together.  In
fact sometimes the East Coast and West Coast division of Watkins-Johnson
had difficulty working together.  And for a short while there were two
divisions within Gaitherburg competing with each other for the same
contracts.

Terry O'
Watkins-Johnson at terryo.org
http://Watkins-Johnson.terryo.org
http://BlackRadios.terryo.org
Facebook:  BlackRadios and BlackRadioSwap





> My understanding is that WJ and Ten Tec were working jointly on a new
> receiver for the government, but the jointness ended when WJ suddenly put
> out a consumer version of the receiver, i.e., the HF 1000.
>
> Given the similarities, I do wonder why the 8711 is 20 inches deep while
> the RX-340 is only 12 inches deep.  It makes one easy to fit into the
> shack and the other difficult.
>
> -- Art Delibert






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