[SFDXA] Ten-Tec

[Bill]

 From Tony N2MFT:

Interesting & long read from new owner of Ten-Tec
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Greetings Friends and Fellow Ten Tec Enthusiasts,

I wanted to update you on what is happening in Sevierville. The 
Smokey Mountains are literally fogged in with smoke in some places as 
Tennessee has many wild fires burning. I was there two weeks ago and 
have never experienced anything like it. Driving down Jellico Mountain 
on I75 it became literally IFR conditions with near zero visibility from 
the smoke. As some of you know Ten Tec has been occupying office 
condominium space behind the site of the former factory where now a 
Wal-Mart Express is sitting. This site is not appropriate for our needs. 
Starting last week, we are moving out of this location into a more 
industrial friendly space. Unfortunately this location is not zoned for 
commercial walk in traffic, so the days of someone showing up at the 
factory door unfortunately have come to an end. After an entire year of 
searching for any possible opportunity to move, this is all we have been 
able to come up with. Commercial real estate is completely out of 
control in Sevierville county because of the tourist industry, and 
unless we have about a half million dollars to invest in the factory 
location you can just forget about it. Ten Tec is "too small" to receive 
any incentive, tax breaks or help from the local so called 
"Economic Development" office.

My opinion is that the State and local government of Tennessee is about 
as economically unfriendly to a small business or start up business as 
is possible. For example, in other counties in TN the standard is to 
create 10 new jobs to get any incentive. Sevier County arbitrarily 
requires 25 jobs. By my calculations, 25 jobs would be around a million 
dollar pay roll if the jobs averaged 15 dollars an hour to the employee 
with a 25% more overhead to the employer. Any business having that kind 
of payroll better have about 10 million in gross receipts which would 
put it at DOUBLE the IRS definition of a small business and QUADRUPLE 
the IRS definition of a micro business, so it is obvious that the 
economic development offices do not have any mandate whatsoever to 
support or help ANY small business reason the scale of an individual 
person's finances. The fact that Ten Tec must have contributed millions 
of tax dollars to the local economy over the last 50 years 
means nothing. In many states, these economic development offices are 
partially funded by the local Chamber of Commerce. It is my opinion 
these offices function as intelligence gathering units to forewarn their 
members of any possible competitor entering their area. If small 
business is truly the economic growth engine of the United States it is 
apparent to me why we have growth problems if we depend on these 
organizations to help us as
individuals.

It seems ironic that the company named TEN TEC for Tennessee 
Technologies can't get any assistance at all in Tennessee considering 
the state's advertising of their "Tennessee Technology Initiative".

If you are wondering why I wrote all this above it is to head off 
the endless string of expert recommendation that I contact TVA and the local
economic development. I've done it and nobody is going to help Ten Tec 
in the State of Tennessee.

To get back on track, I stated above we are moving the remainder of 
this month. You all know what that means. Service will be slow this month.
Robert decided not to have you send in radios this month so we wouldn't 
have to move them. There is no cause for alarm or speculation. Service 
will continue just as soon as we are moved.

I hear and read all kinds of gossip and complaints and this and that 
about our service, and none of it even close to accurate. We have 
serviced hundreds of radios this year and have a bunch of happy 
customers. You will see in the reflector some guy complaining or saying 
he is worried and then five people saying everything was fine. I'm so 
sick of it. Really it is so frustrating, especially when some of you 
call or write me up in Ohio about your twenty year old radio. I can't 
help you. I'm not in Tennessee. The people there run things and do their 
job essentially under Boyd's supervision. I don't want to sound 
condescending or aloof or unreasonable or unfriendly but please see this 
from my perspective. There are thousands of you and one of me. I am 
responsible to run this company and pay the people who work here whose 
families depend on me. I am an electrical engineer and my time needs to 
be spent getting the new products developed and out the door, not with a 
dial string for your old thing that I neither sold you or received any 
benefit of selling to you. Can you directly call the president of Icom? 
Does Eric answer the telephone when you call Elecraft? It is just not 
possible for me to answer every email and every telephone call 
about service issues. If you call me at Dishtronix and leave a message 
asking me to call you about your Ten Tec I'm not returning your call. If 
I answer I'm going to tell you we have put up the procedure that you 
email service at tentec.com <mailto:service at tentec.com>. Yes, I have a 
telephone at Ten Tec and no, you can't have it.

We are short staffed because we do not have sales volume at this time 
to support a large overhead. This way, Robert can go through all of the 
email and respond at one time in the morning, then spend the rest of the 
day shipping radios and parts orders without being interrupted. He is 
there three days a week, so you don't get answers on Monday or Friday. 
Sure, I know some of you don't like it. There is no need to tell me 
about it. I don't like it either, but until we start having a lot more 
cash flow that is the way it is going to have to be. For those that 
complain about how long it is taking, please understand this is a 
million dollar endeavor and money like that just doesn't grow on trees, 
at least for me. Of course any of you wealthy gentlemen looking for a 
good cause to donate some money to - I would love to have the cash on 
hand to turn things around tomorrow. Until then I'll be working 16 hours 
a day seven days a week with no days off and scrimp and save and spend 
carefully and build up slowly just like every other hard working guy has 
to do.

What I am going to try to do next is set up sort of an email hotline 
for critical cases with Bob if he will do it. I just thought of this and 
have to
talk to him about this.

OK, enough about that. Let's get on to some better stuff. Many of you 
know that under RFC and RKR Ten Tec quit doing their PCB assembly in 
house. Those of you who have known me over the decades at Dishtronix 
know my shop suffered heating issues that made it tough for the 
machinery to run in the end of January to February arctic blasts. Well, 
I have a new and very nice double insulated, heated and cooled free span 
metal building where I've moved my PCB assembly operation and this is 
something I'm very excited about. The building has a metal skin totally 
covering the inside with good overhead fluorescent lighting and conduit 
encased electrical outlets every 12 feet around the perimeter. I have 
retired the older Contact Systems placement machines in favor of newer 
MYDATA (Micronics Sweden) placement machines. I installed the first MY9 
machine this last June and have been using it to build boards for the 
RX340 commercial orders we have been fulfilling. Ten Tec did have a MY9 
when they were building boards in house. The MYDATA machines are the 
choice for high mix medium volume production, especially when equipped 
with the Agilis quick change feeder system. Feeders usually cost more 
than the machines in this business, and I've been growing my collection 
all year. I am about a third of the way to having the collection of 
feeders I would like to have.

Earlier this month I got lucky and was able to purchase the bar 
code software which will allow me to load and unload components from the 
machine by just scanning with the barcode reader, and it is done off 
line. It will help with inventory control and component management which 
is a real nightmare considering Ten Tec has over 7000 different line items.

TheMY9 machine has a capability to hold up to 96 different components 
and has a single mounting head. As I write this, an air ride big rig is 
getting closer and closer to Ohio, hauling a MY19 machine in from San 
Francisco which can hold an additional 160 different components (total 
256 8 mm tapes) and has 8 mounting heads! Hopefully this machine will be 
brought online successfully and not be damaged or in bad shape as I've 
bought it sight unseen. I've also moved the 8 zone, lead free capable, 
pin chain conveyor equipped Electrovert Bravo 8105 oven to the new 
building last weekend. This gives us the capability to process double 
sided surface mount and the ability to reliably process BGA chips. I've 
also purchased this summer but not yet installed an X ray machine to do 
100% inspection of the BGA reflow soldering process. With the existing 
equipment (stencil printers, board washers, etc.) this will give us what 
I believe is the most well equipped and modern PCB manufacturing of any 
amateur radio manufacturer in North America. I believe the other guys 
outsource their board assembly. It may be the smart thing to do, but I 
personally prefer to buy and house my own components in house and to 
have total control over my assembly process. I find it requires more 
time to outsource and get constant bids for things like this than to 
just own the equipment and do it myself. I think you get a better 
product at less cost.

Of course the best reason in my opinion for doing it all in house is I 
can do as small of a production run as I want, IF I am willing to spend 
the time to set up and do it. Hence the decision for the quick change 
capability of the MYDATA system.

So, all in all what this means is the Phoenix is rising. I am rebuilding 
Ten Tec and preparing to do some serious manufacturing, which brings me 
to my next point.

Most of you know we have been bogged down and overwhelmed with 
the commercial side of our business this last year since I officially 
assumed the helm in January. With trying to replenish the hard to get / 
long lead time / last time buy / obsolete parts, rebuild the PCB 
assembly operations, moving, and so on we just haven't had the 
horsepower to build any amateur transceivers. Well, the good news is we 
have caught up on our commercial contracts. Be glad we did this. You 
know all the stuff I wrote about above? The commercial contracts paid 
for that. Without this TEN TEC would not exist right now. We are at a 
very important cross roads right now. What do we do next?

Some of you know we are developing new products. Those are still off on 
the horizon. What I need to know is how many of you would purchase 
Eagles if they were available? I'd like to do a run of 100 of them next. 
It is a great radio. I like mine every bit as well as my Orion II. The DSP
function is superb. We have to talk a little bit about price. When 
the Eagle was launched it was a $2100 radio with no accessories. You all 
know
the story of the blow out sales and the liquidation as the previous 
owners sold everything that wasn't nailed down on their way out. Some of 
you got fully loaded radios for $1299 or whatever. You know they didn't 
even cover their assembly cost on that, right? Some of you got real 
bargains. Of course only the last 35 radios or something were sold at 
that price but you get the point. You will never see a price like that 
again. If I have to
sell an Eagle at that I will close and lock the doors and be done with 
it. A strip model needs to sell at 1699 at least. The more you are 
willing to
pay for a radio the faster the new radios can come out. We want to 
build radios and sell them so we can keep the production team in place 
so we can meet the demand when the new radios come out. Everything we do 
tomorrow depends on how much you support us today.

I'm certain some of you have heard that I and two partners acquired 
Alpha and that I've been officially at the Helm since August. It is a 
separate company from Dishtronix / TEN TEC. Of course I will be building 
the circuit boards for those products as well. I'm after something 
business people call economy of scale, essentially having enough product 
flow through the doors to totally occupy the machines and 
infrastructure. I'll be making a post on that reflector as well to 
update those customers also.
  By the way, we do have RX340s available to build on short notice now. 
Let me close by wishing you all a Happy and Safe Thanksgiving holiday, 
one of my favorites and of course the reason I see my dentist in 
November for my pre-feast tune up.

The Sevierville team and I appreciate your support for TenTec, where 
we believe we are once again Making America Great - One Radio at a Time.

VY73 DE MIKE N8WFF