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July 23rd 05, 06:09 PM

wrote:
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.

Well, let's see...

Back in the '60s we had Collins, Drake, National,
Hallicrafters, Hammarlund, Gonset, Heath, Swan, Johnson...
and that's about it for major manufacturers of ham gear
that lasted more than a few years and made more than a
few products. Even in the above list there were limitations
because many of the above did not offer a complete line (EFJ
made mostly transmitters, for example).

Today we have Yaesu, Icom, Kenwood, TenTec, Alinco, Standard,
Elecraft, SGC, and maybe a few more. But see below.

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.

Yep. In some cases it was that the founder had died or retired, and the
company wasn't able to adjust to the new market reality.

This didn't just happen in ham gear - consumer electronics
went the same route. PCs followed.

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.

Drake and Heath had slightly more elaborate product lines - but not by
much. The point is still valid, though. The variety of new rigs today
is amazing.

Here's a game: Look up all the "100 watt class" HF rigs available today
(mid 2005). Compare to what was available 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago.
I bet today's variety is the largest.

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.

Yup - even the small outfits offer product lines that are more
diverse than the big boys offered in "the bad old days".

Not counting all the HF mobile rigs and the equipment being
developed in various skunk works.

*And* not counting the enormous variety of clean, late-model used
equipment that is still very much usable. Take TenTec - if an Orion is
too much and you don't like the Jupiter, there's the Omni 6 in various
flavors, its predecessor the Omni V, the Pegasus, the Paragon, and the
Corsair 2, among others.

Yeah it's a free market economy cycle alrighty.

We've never had it better and it keeps getting better.

The big change is the cost in inflation-adjusted dollars.

The other night I saw an ad for the Kenwood TS-520 in a 1975 QST. $629.
That was back in the days when a new car was less than $4000 and
starting salary for a degreed engineer was maybe $12,000.

That TS-520 was a nice rig in its time, and can still do a good job.
But it won't do the WARC bands, has analog readout, no passband tuning,
no ATU, no RS-232 port, no memories and no blanker. The external second
VFO, CW filter, 12VDC supply and digital readout were extra-cost
features ($179 for the digital readout alone!)

It did have three tubes inside (driver and finals) and you could turn
off their heaters if you wanted. Of course you had to tune it up...

What's $629 from 1975 equate to in 2005, adjusted for inflation?
Probably as much as an IC-756 costs now.

Or look at the SB-101 from the mid 1960s. $369 for the rig, almost
another hundred for the power supply, CW filter and speaker. Say $450 -
for a kit! What's that in today's dollars?

73 de Jim, N2EY

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