"D Peter Maus" wrote in message
...

::major snippage::

If you read what I posted back then, I did say precisely that.
The
point, however, is that there was clearly a double tiered QC
specification. That alone speaks volumes about what was really
driving
this train. And the true nature of the product. While serious
outlets
got hand selected or hand tweaked rigs, general production went to
SA,
and their like and kind. With one SA outlet reporting almost 100%
returns, tipping the real story about SAT 800. No other product in
it's
class has received such hand selected product distribution.
Certainly
not R-75. One is as good as another in that line. Seems not to be
the
case with SAT 800 and THAT tells the bigger story.

My thinking is that for a Chinese factory to have the
QC necessary to properly supply all outlets with
a quality level approaching that from Universal or
Grove, it would raise the cost level of the product
to be in closer alignment with the SW8. Therefore,
my suspicion is that (at least for the initial shipments)
they did the two tiered system so that they wouldn't
completely lose their shirts on the Sat 800.

It says more about the (lack of) quality at the Tecsun
factory than anything else.

::more snippage::

To be honest, I've never owned a Grundig/Lextronix
other than this one, so I have no point to compare
with other Grundigs. As for the other items, I will
concede all points. I suspect it comes more from a
jealous guarding of company secrets (this is Lextronix,
not Grundig, so the viewpoint is different) than from
a screw thy neighbor approach.



Don't make the mistakee that Lextronix products are Grundig
products.
Lextronix was only a distributor for Grundig, and bought the right
to
the name. Lextronix products are produced without involvement of
Grundig
in anyway. And in the case of SAT 800, Grundig AG didn't even
acknowledge it's existence.

I've owned and still own a number of products from Grundig AG.
They
Lextronix products bearing the Grundig name don't even come close.

I wasn't making that mistake, I was thinking that the
"Grundig" name is, for all purposes, dead. The
Grundig name doesn't engender quality anymore,
like a German built car does anymore.

And the issue is not so much 'screw thy neighbor' as much as a
marketing department run amuk. Lextronix is a marketing company.
They
have no product with their name on it, so they have no brand to
protect.
They have no manufacturing division, so they have little influence
over
QC, or, quite frankly, any motivation to have it. They only worry
about
the marketing. Any hits taken by the brand are not their concern.

Except in the bottom line. Which they seem to have
done well enough to survive to creating the latest
batch of radios.

::more snippage::

I do not think it an accident that they got it to Magne
the way they did. If they were putting Passports into
some of the boxes for shipments, it would behoove
Lextronix to have a review of the Sat 800 in the best
possible light in the Passport inside the box. Dishonest??
No. Trying to maximize exposure?? Yes. Doing it in
a less than aboveboard manner?? Yes.



Actually, Dishonest YES. If you're bringing to market a product
and
promoting it in less than above board ways, that IS dishonest.

Microsoft and ATT were busted for precisely the kind of deception
displayed by Lextronix, here.

MS and ATT were busted also because they were
a legal monopoly. Lextronix is (thankfully) not
a legal monopoly on shortwave devices.



As for Radio Nederland, that doesn't surprise me much.
The Sat 800 was designed for the American market,
and the marketing geniuses at Lextronix probably figured
that it wasn't a high priority to get a sample out to a
"foreign" reviewer. Last I checked, though, Tom was
still located in the U.S. I've seen how marketers think,
and getting a lot of them to think outside of the narrow
viewpoint that they have and accept a wider scope
is an exercise in deprogramming.

That argument doesn't holdd water. Lextronix promised radios to
RN
for the Media Network evaluation. Promised repeatedly. To the degree
that RN even went on the air with a teaser that an evaluation would
be
coming shortly based on the expected, promised arrival of the radio
from
Lextronix. With each missed evaluation, Media Network again promised
a
full review based on receivers delivered from Lextronix. But
Lextronix
never delivered. Instead superserving the one reviewer who had
already
endorsed the radio as, 'the best shortwave receiver in the world,'
before the first prototype was built. Also something less than
honest.

Ah. I'd forgotten that part.

::more snippage::

When I spoke to the service manager at Drake, he
told me that eton/Lextronix had bought the Drake
design for the SW8, and tweaked it themselves
for use in the Sat 800. A nice little side effect of this
is that you get to put your name on the box, and
don't have to reference Drake's name.



You missed the point. Whether the design of SW-8 was actually
bought
is also something of a mystery. Drake was discontinuing the product,
claiming that key components were no longer available. Lex/Tecs
would
be buying a product design that would no longer be manufacturable.
The
circuitry would have bo be modified. In fact, Tecsun has more than
enough experience to do this, and as I said, the only thing they
would
really need is the IF strip, or more specifically, the sync
circuitry.
But, there, again, is more mystery. A service manager tells you that
Lex/Tecs buys the SW-8 design, an engineer at Drake tells another
member
of this group that they only bought the sync, another tells me that
the
total involvement of Drake in the SAT 800 project came down to two
phone
calls and a couple of faxes. More questions than mysteries. But the
real
point is that while Drake is touted as the architect of this rig by
everyone and anyone who has an opinion, nowhere is Drake mentioned
in
any official literature. If the Drake involvement is such a matter,
no
marketing department would let that go unmentioned. Especially when
everything else about the marketing of the product has been so much
of a
runaway train. Unusual and highly singular restraint. Which raises,
again, more questions about the true nature of the product.

Unless its a marketing department that believes it's
own clippings. After all, Grudig had that legendary
quality to it, so why should they mention that it
was a Drake design?? Most people (non hobbyists)
would look at that and say "Drake who??"

::more snippage::

Like I said then, I can say that I know I didn't get
a turkey. That doesn't invalidate all those other
people who did, but that also doesn't mean that
the people (like me) who didn't aren't idiots, either.
I honestly have not kept track of the quality of the
runs after I dropped out of the hobby for a couple
of years in the early 2000's, so I also can't say if
Lextronix has ever solved their production issues.

All I can say is that it is a good portatop if you get
a good production model. At the time, if you
couldn't plunk down the kilobuck for a good
tabletop, the Sat 800 was a decent alternative.
I know that the Sat 800 isn't the Second
Coming, and I know that the Sat 800 has had a
checkered past mainly based on the fact that
to keep costs down they rolled the dice and went
overseas to China for production.



First of all, no one has suggested you were an idiot, so that's a
bit
more defensive than the situation calls for.

Actually, some people have, but not in this case. I
was thinking of the strident ends of the spectrum in
the Sat 800 argument. You know, the ones who
think in black and white and "how dare you have
a different opinion".

And secondly, you have been
more fair here than many have been about his radio, and I respect
that.
But thirdly, and this is the point I've apparently not been very
good
att presenting...for the newcomer to the hobby, or for the
unknowing,
the level of hype and the marketing noise does more harm than good.
If
the hobby is to survive, it need the knowledgable and the
experienced.
Each with a decent sense of history. This single product and the
religion that's been built around it have done an enormous
disservice to
those who have not been fully informed, just as it's done an
enormous
disservice to Grundig, and to Drake through it's more than deceptive
marketing strategies.

To be honest, the marketing hype notwithstanding,
a newcomer to the hobby shouldn't be buying a
$500 radio to start with anyway. They also shouldn't
be starting with a $50 cheapie, either. In my case,
my first radio was the old DX-440, which was good
enough yet cheap enough to make it worth my
while to fiddle with it and work the bands.

Everyone here has read the frequent complaints if not diatribes
against our favorite eBay scamster, ....whatever he calls himself
today...offering products are far above going prices, with elaborate
hyperbole in his listing copy, even offering factory warranties for
products for which he is not an authorized retailer. And the
complaints
have been quite shrill. And yet, Lextronix has been just as
deceptive,
without a peep out of the same people. Why the double standard?
Deceptive marketing is deceptive marketing.

I would suppose that because the Radio-Mart
controversy continues to play itself out every
couple of months, that Radio-Mart has remained
on the radar longer.

Considering the Sat 800 topic comes up every
4-5 months, with nothing new on the horizon,
that the arguments have gotten to the point
that they've all been said before. Lately the
R-75 vs. R8B argument had supplanted the
Sat 800 one.

::more snippage::

This is what a lot of companies want to evolve into:
a marketing and "core business" company. Sell off
assets that aren't part of the "core business" (whatever
the hell that means) and concentrate on what you
do best. Thing is, when you sell off things like
factories, you're at the mercy of a contractor to provide
the quality people have come to expect from you.
Think of the upsides to this that IBM is pitching
to their customers: let us handle your HR or your
IT or your payroll or your accounting, and you can
go and do the "big things". The problem is, IBM
has a different set of goals to make a profit, and that
may or may not intersect with your own.

Unfortunately, I see more of this in the future, rather
than less.



Very likely. But by acceeding to it as inevitable, we make it
inevitable. It may be an uphill battle to make sure the facts are
clearly heard, but it's a battle that must be fought.

Usually this sort of business fad takes a few internal
hits before a company will change their minds about
it. Look at what happened with Bank One and IBM.
Bank One outsourced all their IT to IBM (including
all the personnel). IBM took the IT department and
proceeded to do what outsourcing companies do:
minimum effort - maximum profit. Except that Bank
One couldn't do anything they wanted to do. Bank
One eventually told IBM to take a hike, and hired
back the best people from the outsourcing. More of
that sort of thing will cause big companies to think
twice about outsourcing.

(No, I don't work for IBM. I know people who work
at Bank One, or whatever the hell it's called after the
takeover by Chase.)

::more snippage::

That was clear. More powerful audio, to be sure. But you see,
aggain, there are no specifics about what was actually done. It's
entirely possible that the audio is all the changes there are.


I have an SW-8. In fact, I bought it from a member of this group.
The
audio is much different than that of SAT 800. But from my
experience
with both radios, actual performance, on the same antenna goes to
the
Drake. That doesn't speak very well of Lex/Tecs
design/adaption/production.

More production than anything else, I'd wager.

--Mike L.