Dee Flint wrote:
Boy did you fall for a bunch of propaganda!

Amen. In spades.

As far as the declining number of manufacturers goes, the normal progression in any business
is towards fewer companies serving the market. Unless one takes steps to stop it, a
free market economy goes through a cycle. New product with lots of new companies. Then
continuing consolidation until there is a near monopoly by one or a handful of companies.

That's true in general Dee but what "declining number of manufacturers"
- within the context of ham radio? It just ain't so. I suspect that if
somebody put the effort into pulling together the actual facts they'd
find that the total number of manufacturers in the ham radio market is
higher today than it's ever been in the past.

Almost all of the "glory-days" U.S. supply siders went bust or
abandoned the ham radio market and moved on to survive when the JA's
landed 1975-1980. Yaesu, Icom, Kenwood, Alinco, Honda, Toyota and
Datsun pulled off what Yamamoto and Nagumo failed to pull off their way
a bit earlier. Within ham radio Hallicrafters, Swan, National,
Hammarlund, Drake and Heath simply evaporated with barely a trace left
in the ham biz, Collins is one which simply moved on. Not a
consolidation in sight anywhere.

Off on another tangent consider the implications of another aspect:
Collins offered only two basics routes a ham could use to get on the HF
bands with their gear at any given point in time. One xcvr and one pair
of separates. Period. Ditto Drake and for the most part Heath too.
Those three companies overwhelmingly dominated the HF ham gear market
for years. Today Icom is offering four desktop HF xcvrs with two more
in the pipeline, Kenwood offers four, and Yeasu has seven in their
catalog with another one coming. Ten-tec and Elecraft are doing nicely.
Not counting all the HF mobile rigs and the equipment being developed
in various skunk works. Yeah it's a free market economy cycle alrighty.


We've never had it better and it keeps getting better. These Junior
Grade "the sky is falling" yahoos need to be written off as as just
that.

w3rv