If the average american household had 2.3 ham radio transceivers, and
production runs were typically in the hundreds of thousands or millions, I
would likely concur with the comparision to consumer electronics and
computers.
Any suggestions on other reasonably sophisticated goods we have purchased
over the past 35 years that have productions runs as limited as our gear?
It's not that that the goods need to be similar; in fact, due to the nearly
non-existent economies of scale at the design and assembly level (not the
component level), I think our radio manufactuers have done a great job. TVs
are cheap, stereos are cheap, in no small part because the designs probably
don't differ much from model to model (perhaps even among manufacturers) and
the overhead can be amortized over much larger production runs.
Art
KC2G
----- Original Message -----
From: "Duane Grotophorst" <n9dg@yahoo.com>
To: <AC5E@aol.com>; <tentec@contesting.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 12:15 PM
Subject: Re: [TenTec] Annotation to prices in perspective
> Comparing historic radio prices against general
> consumer goods prices does indeed provide an
> interesting perspective of what today's radios really
> cost relative our other daily purchases. And no doubt
> we get much more for our dollar today that we did 30
> years ago.
>
> A more interesting comparison however would be to look
> at somewhat more comparable products such as TV's and
> stereos etc. That kind of comparison is really more
> meaningful than comparing against other, non
> electronic products. In that case ham gear's relative
> bang for the buck isn't nearly so good anymore. An
> even more illuminating analysis is to compare the cost
> of a 1975 vintage radio against todays in the context
> of the personal computer, also consider the their
> comparative performance/price gains over the same
> period. In that particular case our beloved radios
> don't look very good at all, in fact down right poor.
>
> With the increasing use of DSP in our gear we should
> theoretically be able to ride the wave of Moore's law
> to some degree.
>
> Duane
> N9DG
>
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