If the conversation was about EmComm, then why wasn't that listed on the
Subject Line? :) And how did we get to EmComm from Price per Watt
Conversation? And from there to a religious discussion of the virtues of
CW, and how discontinuing a CW requirement has destroyed ham radio. None
of which I accept. My response was to W8HW, whose perception of CW
activity differs from mine by an order of magnitude. Like I said
earlier, I'm a CW op, have been all my life. But I don't try to deny
reality by saying the CW bands are hopping when they are not.
Several days ago, I went nearly a week back in that thread to find
anything about Price per Watt! Why? Because being the son of
accountants, I wanted to add to that conversation the additional factor
of the useful life of the amplifier.
That's how I look at an investment -- if I spend $3K to buy a power amp
(or a radio), I expect it to last a while. I own three Titans that I
bought used for about $1.5K each and have used for more than ten years.
If I sell one for $1K (I should be able to get more), it's cost me $50
per year for 1.5kW. Which works out to $0.033 per year per watt. And --
if I'd bought it new around 1987 for $3K and it dies in 2017, it's cost
me $100 a year for 1.5 kW, that's $0.066 per watt per year. One of those
three amps lost it's transformer over the winter, so this is not a
hypothetical. :)
Why did I go through those examples? Because that long discussion
morphed into the service life of solid state and hollow state devices.
When we have to give up on a product because parts become unobtainium
(remember the first Ten Tec solid state amp, when Motorola discontinued
the devices only a year or two into production?)
73, Jim K9YC
On Fri,4/28/2017 6:11 PM, Carl wrote:
You might be going on 76 Jim but when you cant stay on subject I begin
to wonder.
Im going on 77 and knew the subject was about emergency comms, not
daydreaming in the home ham shack.
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