As I say, in reality the situation has never been better! It's we
ourselves who need to change our buying habits.


Better yet of course, is SMT Ian. If you can use half an order of
FST-3125's, (1250), I can buy them at $0.22 each.

At $0.86 each in single quantity, they're still cheaper than an MCL
mixer/switch, by 5X at least. And, yield greatly improved performance to
boot!

W4ZCB

In article ,
"Chuck / KE4ETH" wrote:

It's a sad thing.

My local Radio Shack is run by a fellow that stocks parts. Not the RS brand,
but Ohmite and others. We have a college in that town and an electrical
engineering department, so I guess that one doesn't count. A company store,
45 miles away, has an upright cabinet with drawer with resistors, ICs, Caps
and other parts. Not a good selection, but some. Another store 35 miles away
has the same kinda drawers with the same kinda items.

The seem to want to sell (and promise the moon) on appliance items.


big snip

Isn't the CEO of RS a women? I don't think she ever built a thing in her
life.

--

Reverse address to reply.

"Duncan Walters" wrote in
news
Anyone would think that home construction was a dying hobby!

No! Say it ain't so!

"donut" wrote in message
...
"Duncan Walters" wrote in
news
Anyone would think that home construction was a dying hobby!

No! Say it ain't so!

Where will we live......

Where will we live......

DOH !!

Where will we live......

DOH !!

"donut" wrote in message
...
"Duncan Walters" wrote in
news
Anyone would think that home construction was a dying hobby!

No! Say it ain't so!

Where will we live......

"Duncan Walters" wrote in
news
Anyone would think that home construction was a dying hobby!

No! Say it ain't so!

"Alex" wrote in message
...
my local RS had a pretty good selection of basic parts (2n2222's
resistors, tools, caps, etc) until last fall when they just decided, for
no apparent reason, to stop carrying them. They lost my business. Now I
drive into Montreal to goto ABRA, much cheaper parts ($0.05 each for
capacitors), but the cost of gas makes it impractical to go for less
than $20 of parts.

Tweetldee wrote:
Well, I guess the death knell has sounded for the Shack as a source for
experimenter and hobbyist parts. I went into a relatively new store
(open
less than a year) today to get a few resistors that I need in a hurry.
What
did I find? Not a resistor, capacitor, transistor, IC, switch, fuse, or
anything that would be considered an electronic component was to be
found.
They had all kinds of TV coax, TV connectors, cell phones, home phones,
phone accessories, satellite TV equipment, expensive toys, and a few
stereo
"systems", but but not an electronic component in sight. They had wire,
solder, soldering irons, and such, but nothing to solder the wires to.
They
don't even carry the small project boxes any more.
They're looking more like the electronics section in WalMart every day.
Ooops, I take that back... the Shack's prices are 40-100% above what
you'll
pay for the same item at WalMart.

Adios Radio Shack !! RIP

--
Tweetldee
Tweetldee at att dot net (Just subsitute the appropriate characters in
the
address)

Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.




My local Radio Shack INCREASED the amount of parts they carried a couple of
months ago. They moved all the parts from the wall racks to a couple of
cabinets, but in the process, increased the number of different types they
stocked.

"Tweetldee" wrote in message ...
Adios Radio Shack !! RIP

Well, they still have fuses and light bulbs, at least.

Digi-Key has, in the past decade or so, gotten really good at carrying RF
inductors and capacitors. They even have a small assortment of microwave
parts now. I think that homebrewing could be entering a renaissance age
of using all the really good radio stuff that is permeating everywhere.

Recently I built a 1.6 GHz LNA with a 0.5 dB noise figure... using about
$5 in parts from Digi-Key. This *is* the dawn of a new age in homebrewing.

Tim.