Mike, Others,
1. I was bequeathed both an Orion II and an Alpha 99, and was told by
local friends that I should sell them immediately as they will soon be
worthless. I had operated both the O2 and the 99 at the SK's qth for
multi-op contests, and loved them much better than my own rigs, so I
kept / am keeping them. Need to update the O2, and who knows maybe send
it back to TT for an overhaul.
Yes, I know, no dollars direct to you yet. But I'm there in spirit.
2. Haven't figured out how the band-stacking feature works - maybe user
ignorance - but otherwise the O2's front panel seems great.
Really hope you succeed.
73, Bob, w3idt
--
.............................
. Robert F. Teitel, W3IDT .
. .
. W3IDT@arrl.net .
. W3IDT@comcast.net .
.............................
On 2/21/2017 3:28 AM, Mike Dishop via TenTec wrote:
OK, there is complaints that I don't communicate directly with you. Let me
see if I can actually post on the reflector correctly. I'm afraid I work very
hard each day and don't have time to make posts and things like this so I don't
quite know how to reply to a thread, but here goes. Something you might keep
in mind is if one of you make an ass out of yourself on a reflector it doesn't
do anything but make you look stupid. Anything I say however will be taken out
of context and distorted by some person to try to shed a bad light on me or the
company. I have a number of people working for me who depend on this for their
livelihood. Please think about what damage you are doing when you spread
outright lies that Ten Tec or Alpha is out of business. We have been open and
working since I purchased the companies. Hundreds of radios have been repaired,
including radios that were piled up and unrepaired by the previous owners.
Even the backlog at Alpha has been mostly cleare
d except for a few 87A's which are very difficult to get parts for. Alpha is
producing amplifiers entirely in house now and has nothing but satisfied owners
since I assumed control of the company. If anyone wants a brand new 9500, I've
got one sitting on the shelf waiting for you. We are caught up on ALL amplifier
back orders. I've spent a lot of time getting critical and long lead
components back in stock. For example, the ceramic plate choke and 160m coil
form provider went out of business and didn't tell us. This week we are
receiving brand new designed ceramic coil forms which is about the last
specialty item I've had to clear up. The good news? We designed it in such a
way that the TEN TEC roller inductor will now have a ceramic coil form instead
of the grooved fiberglass which is the FIRST step to making more 238C antenna
tuners! So there are HUNDREDS of things happening behind the scenes you don't
know about and frankly you don't need to know about. We are doin
g what we need to do as fast as we can do it. If I publish everything I'm
doing then competitors will think what a great idea and run with it. Think it
won't happen? I can name a dozen products it has happened on but if I do I'll
just be accused of lying or sour grapes.
First let me thank each of you who expressed well wishes for me and Ten Tec.
I'm sure I've alienated some of you and I apologize if I make anyone feel bad,
but frankly you have never stopped a single time to consider my situation. I
want to address directly the do not contact me about service for your amateur
radio at Dishtronix. First off, I answer my own telephone unlike anyone else
in the industry. 614 675 2497 is my direct line right to my desk. So let me
ask you a question - is My job to get Ten Tec healthy and to get the company
to a point where it can supply hundreds of radios again? Or should I spend my
time trying to arrange a $5 dial string for some obsolete radio sold to the
three previous owners before you when I was ten years old? Now perhaps one
phone call a day I can handle. But how about ten or twenty? Especially when
you want to talk to me for a half hour? I'm not in Tennessee. I'm in Ohio! I
have NO CLUE if they have a dial string or not. It is
very plainly stated to email them but despite the numerous postings about it
you continue to call me. When you look up the number right there on the web it
asks you to write Ten Tec but SOME of you just can't accept this and call
anyway, and wonder why I am irritated when you ask me about a dial string.
Let me ask you the same question. How many radios can the bench tech repair if
he is on the phone with ten people a half hour each per day?
YES, TEN TEC HAS A TELEPHONE! Do you want to know the real reason it isn't
published? THE BENCH TECHS SUGGESTED GETING RID OF THE PHONE SO THEY CAN
ACTUALLY FIX RADIOS. There - I've just gone ahead and said it. Now you know.
Someone suggested I hire someone and pay them 12 dollars an hour to answer the
phone. First off, get real. You have forgotten the unemployment insurance,
state employers tax, federal employers tax, social security withholding of 7.5%
contribution by me. Add about 35-50 percent to that figure and you see it is
very close to 18 dollars an hour cost to me to pay a man 12 dollars per hour.
Lets multiply that by 2080 hours in a year with no benefits. It is close to 40
grand just to pay someone to talk to you about service. Now, just how many
radios do you think we repair? 10 a week? so spend 40K for 500 radios is $80
per service call. So instead of paying less than $300 on an average repair not
it cost $400. Oh, that $25 dial string - now it is $125.
So you don't like my website. You don't like the grainy pictures that were taken
DIRECTLY from the RKR website. You don't like that I don't update it. You don't
like that I don't have a professional advertising staff and a full time webmaster...
Well guess what. ALL THAT TAKES MONEY THAT I DON"T HAVE AND THAT YOU ARE NOT
PAYING FOR. Please make your non-charitable donation checks out to Dishtronix, Inc
and mail to PO Box 1007 Bellefontaine, OH 43311. If 500 of you each send me a
thousand dollars I can hire all these people and get the new ham products out we are
working on sooner. All we need is money. We have the skilled people, the
technology, the machinery - EVERYTHING we need but money. Just wait until you see
what we have planned for you.
Now I KNOW the above paragraph is going to really stir the pot. There are
going to be those who are going to say why should we support you for free?
Allow me to ask an equivalent question. If I subsidize Ten Tec and they loose
money, perhaps say on service, am I not extending charity to those of you who
get your radios repaired and dial strings? Have I made my point?
Here are your alternatives in case you don't get it. I can close TEN TEC, quit
answering the phone and quit repairing radios. If I do that I will get the
next radio out sooner because I won't have to deal with this sort of gossip,
rumors, lies, slander and negativity. I won't have to answer the phone about
dial strings and tell you to follow the obvious established procedure of
emailing service@tentec.com.
So we have speech processors for sale, 612s whatever those are, all kinds of
microphone cords and microphones and a whole bunch of the CW version Arduino
radio in stock. We are working on the store. It will be just like the Alpha
store. We have that up and running.
Guess what else we have working in TN? Anyone remember the missing WARC bands
in the Argonaut? Well they are in there now. I just need money to buy the
parts. For every radio you can plan on needing about 100K investment in
rolling inventory of parts at all times.
In the last year TT has gone from outsourcing all their circuit board
manufacturing to returning it all in house under my roof. We built up a new
surface mount facility using the income from the RX340 contracts we fulfilled
last year that enabled TEN TEC to stay open. Please forgive me for doing what I
have to do to keep the doors at TEN TEC open, no matter how much you disagree
with me or my methods.
What is the best website in the world and the glossiest advertising good for if
the doors close for good? Who is going to repair your radios or supply your
dial strings then? WHERE SHOULD I EXPEND MY LIMITED RESOURCES/ WHERE WILL
THEY DO THE MOST GOOD?
Frankly it doesn't matter what I do with Ten Tec. If I bring out a new transceiver
and you like it you will buy it. Except of course for the people overheard saying
they would never buy a TEN TEC or an Alpha again because the future of the company
is uncertain. Yet Rick-UFO brings out a new QRP radio from a group nobody has ever
heard of, or somebody from China puts a cheap amplifier on eBay and you fall all
over yourselves to get one because it is cheap. Who cares that you never heard of
them. Who cares about service? Witness the miracle of Baofeng and the
WalMartization of America and the decline of Western civilization and the abundant
lifestyle. It doesn't matter how it sounds or how good it works, only that it is
CHEAP. I wish the government would subsidize my R&D and supply me slave labor
like SOME companies benefit from.
How many of you have tried to get a 5 or ten year old transceiver repaired at
IcoYasWood? Or get any kind of satisfaction out of them of any kind? I tried
for a year to get through at one of the service departments for a certain
XX-100 radio that I bought new with a problem. It never was resolved. I
finally got a service manual through my friend who I have no idea how he
managed to purchase it.
We have repaired over FIVE HUNDRED transceivers and amplifiers this last year.
Out of production Omni VI, Orion, Orion II, and supplied dial strings, PTO
rebuild kits, etc.
This is my 18th year in the ham radio business. You can't find ONE person who
says I screwed them over or did not deliver what I guaranteed I would do. How
many times do I see on this reflector someone complains about TT service and
ten people respond that their radio was repaired promptly, the price was
reasonable and the radio works? Granted we don't get it right every single
time. Factory techs miss things too. We are all human and prone to error.
If you don't like how I'm handling things quit being part of the problem and be part of
the solution. I hear all of this about how I should do this and that. It is real easy to
say that I should do this and this and that. Or that "all" I need to do is put
this feature and this feature from that radio over here and BINGO, there is the new
product. Speaking as a degreed Electrical Engineer with about 45 years experience
building electronics I can tell you quite frankly if you make a statement like that you
are telegraphing to the world loud and clear that you have no idea how things work and
that you have never commercially taken an electronic product to market. At the
performance level we expect in modern equipment NOTHING is trivial. These high IP3
numbers don't happen by accident. I can tell you that for every circuit board in my
Prometheus amp there were sometimes two dozen previous circuit boards that worked 99%.
99% is easy. It is the 1% that kills you.
Good is not good enough if you intend to be great. Leave the engineering
decisions to the engineers is usually a good practice. You wouldn't want me to
operate on you if you needed a kidney transplant would you? Wouldn't you want
a real doctor? Maybe even a specialist?
Discussion of features and wants are welcome as long as the discussion is
constructive and positive. If I communicate through third parties it MIGHT be
because they can say things that I can't. I've got twenty bucks that says at
least one person is going to take what I've said out of context and try to tear
me to shreds for it. This is exactly why I don't post in these things.
I would greatly appreciate those of you who when you hear some jackass
spreading lies saying TT or Alpha is out of business to set them straight.
these people are nothing but vicious trolls. It is called libel and it is a
civil offense.
Ten Tec is making radios. Alpha is making amplifiers. I offered to bring back
the Eagle because it is a good receiver that doesn't make your ears bleed. It
sounds good and you can listen to it for hours. It gives the production people
something to do and keeps them busy until the next great radio is ready. Maybe
it enables us to build a supply line of parts that may be used in the next
great radio. Maybe we have a strategy and a reason for doing things the way we
are.
As to the price, I tallied up what it takes for a K2, which uses the Jones
filter incidentally, to do full featured 100W 160-6 all modes and it is over
2K. So the Eagle which is also a single conversion receiver and comes fully
assembled and is also designed and made in America, and in my opinion sounds
better is priced less. So please criticize my wonderful competitors equally.
Here might be a reason for buying a radio. Those who have Eagles keep them
because they like how they sound and how they receive. That is why you buy
one, not because of the price. You can drive a Rolls Royce or a Beetle.
Beetles are fun if you don't mind being cold in the winter. Frankly if the
difference between $1300 and $1700 is a major decision for you and you can't
spend $400 to have what you want, well maybe you should find a hobby you can
afford. If you really can't afford that extra $400 you better dig deep and buy
the radio that the company will still service even after it has been out of
production just like we do every other Ten Tec because everything breaks
eventually, and when it does you will be thankful you bought ours because we
will still be here. How many 40 year old Icoms are still on the air?
I challenge any one of you to do better. Put your money up and purchase the
company from me and you can do what you want with it. Until then I am very
sorry but somebody has to pay the bills and make the hard decisions and be
criticized for it. If you want that job you can have it. I'll come to work for
you. I'd love to have a steady paycheck and not have to deal with negativity
and vicious liars. It isn't going to be cheap however. Oh yes, you know I can
just give it all to the Chinese right? They could probably get you Eagles for
$500. What do you think that would do to the industry? Why would anyone want
to invent anything better if you can get it for free? Hello Baofeng, anybody
listening? If money is all you judge a radio quality by I can fix that. Of
course you'll have to say goodbye to dial strings and PTOs forever.
73 de N8WFF
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