I think most hams prefer the tan/gray look because it comes closer to
matching commercial equipment that you might find in professional situations
such as broadcasting. I don't look at the black thing as an attempt to
become equal to the JA gear. I view it purely as a business/marketing
decision. You have to understand that these guys have to do things
sometimes that they may not want to do in order to sell radios, make money
and stay in business. They might like tan radios; they might like the idea
of taking a stand and being different but in the end if they're good at
running a business, they'll have to do what's best for the company and that
means making gear that will appeal to the broadest market.
Threre was a time when every manufacturer made a distinctive product
line--everyone remembers the shack photos of hams sitting next to their
S-Lines etc. not a wire in sight, proudly (justifiably so) beaming at the
camera. Manufacturers made everything to match; it looked good and it kept
customers "in the family" by building brand loyalty. You couldn't stick
that Heathkit speaker cabinet next to the KWM2A; no you had to go get the
Collins widget with the phone patch built in with the speaker or whatever
that thing was they made so it would all match. Same with Drake et al. and
even the JA companies.
Then in the early 1980s I believe, someone, maybe at a consumer audio
electronics company, discovered that if you made the separate audio (video
etc.) components so they'd look okay together but not *really* unique, your
Teac CD player, JVC amp and so on would fit in with not only same company
products but everyone else's as well, and you could sell your FM tuner to
the guy with the Panasonic amp or the Technics turntable and Sony CD player
and get more sales volume. I think this idea eventually made it into the JA
ham product lines because those companies (Kenwood anyway) made other
things. At some point, Ten Tec had to decide to go this route, so that they
could sell not only to us, but to the guys with shacks full of JA gear. You
might harrumph that in principle no one should make a buying decision based
on looks but then what's all the focus on the Orion appearance all about?
Also, face it, there's 3 JAs and 1 Ten Tec--being a smart businessman also
means knowing when to throw in the towel.
Most hams may not realize that ham equipment companies are small. Very
small. I'll bet the whole Ten-Tec payroll is around 50. In bigger
companies the ham divisions are there not for big profits but because they
may use hams as a sort of beta test population or there are enough guys on
the payroll who are hams, and love the hobby to keep the product lines
going. Maybe the CEO is a ham. Sometimes these companies get bought by Big
Conglomerates, the bean counters rule that the ham division is unprofitable
and that's the end of that (a couple of well known American companies come
to mind). Ten Tec has the support of their enclosure, tool and die, and
commercial lines but they still must make ham equipment that will generate
revenues. There's a lot to do to bring Orion to market. The design has to
be finished. The rig has to be photographed, and ad layouts made. The
manual has to be written (it's not as easy as you may think). The bench
techs have to learn about the new rig. The sales staff has to learn about
it so they can talk about it and the assy. line has to be set up. It's a
pretty big deal and they're probably working long hours these days, and
after all that, of all the licensed-for-HF hams world wide, with maybe 15%
active, and of that, a very tiny percent able to afford it with the setups
to make full use of it, they'll probably sell 3,000 to 5,000 of these things
tops over time. Will all that on the line, the idea of staying
individualistic and alienating the potential JA gear-owner customer is not
an option.
73
Rob
K5UJ
P.s. I doubt if anyone is going to start making a single 3-500 amp. The
ones on the market don't appear to be moving all that well. QRO recently
dropped theirs from their product line.
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