Jim raises a very significant point.
There is a definite trend in industry towards "commodity" products and away
from "craft built" products. Consider the immense amount of useful
computational power available for paltry sums; and not just because the
microprocessor is powerful and inexpensive.. the huge volumes in consumer
applications make all the surrounding stuff inexpensive as well: power
supplies, metalwork, etc., as long as it can be produced by the hundreds of
thousands. (one can also argue about the quality of consumer goods, but, in
general, it's not bad, and at least it is consistent)
I type this on a fairly old laptop, with a 2.4 GHz digital radio at 11Mbps
with fairly sophisticated signal processing, several high performance PLL
synthesizers, etc. that cost $30. Likewise, consider a $30 GPS module.. A
reasonably high performance 1.5 GHz receiver with a very low noise figure.
Consider a FRS radio. Comparable RF performance to most 440 HTs, but you can
buy a FRS radio for $20. No ham is going to even come close, even if you got
most of the parts for free.
Such things greatly shift the balance and economics. 50 (or even 30) years
ago, homebrew was cheaper than manufactured, because the homebrewer used
essentially the same assembly techniques as the manufacturer (think, point
to point wiring of vacuum tube radios, and even early PC boards). One could
build a personal computer in 1980 cheaper than one could buy one, because
volumes were small. Could you design and build (not assemble from
subsystems) a PC today for anything remotely resembling the purchase price
of a PC?
The other factor that's driving things is the increased stratification of
the retail market. There is, more and more, either very high quality, very
expensive, custom equipment, and then a huge gap, then the commodity, lowest
cost. Large volume retailers such as Best Buy, Home Depot, and Wal-mart
recognize that most people shop solely on price, and it's not cost effective
to stock anything but the lowest cost item. Lowest cost implies mass
production, on automated factories, in countries with low infrastructure and
labor costs (i.e. China). This does not bode well for people looking for
stuff that's not "top of the line" but also is not "mass market" (i.e. ham
radio).
So, our real task, as hams, is to figure out how to take advantage of what's
available now, rather than bemoaning the loss of industries and products
that don't fit within the economic and business model of today.
Fortunately, hams, as a group, are good at improvising.
We can take a lesson from the supercomputer business. The cluster computing
concept (Beowulf) has revolutionized supercomputing, to the extent that
probably 90% of all supercomputer applications are being run on clusters of
essentially commodity, consumer equipment, an architecture that essentially
did not exist before 1990. New computational strategies were developed to
take advantage of the peculiarities of computers developed for the
burgeoning consumer and business market, leveraging off the billions of
dollars being spent on R&D in that area.
Consider, for instance, AC5OG's selection of an ordinary PC to do all the
digital signal processing in the SDR-1000 (http://www.flex-radio.com/) and
to code the software in, of all things, Visual Basic. Sure, there are DSP
chips and languages that are more suited to this kind of thing, but, I can
buy a 1GHz+ PC for under $200, and odds are, I probably already have a PC
anyway. Compare that to even the cheapest DSP eval board, which would need a
PC to load the software anyway. Why not leverage off the consumer market?
So, what can we scrounge from the consumer, high volume market? What things
are going to be getting cheaper? PC processing power certainly. Networking
technology. High power high voltage switching power supplies ("inverter
microwave ovens") - no more 40 pound power transformers for that linear!
high performance solid state PAs (driven by advances in IGBT and MOSFETs for
the motor drive and automotive 3phase inverter market) What's NOT going to
be available: building blocks.. modern trends are towards higher
integration.
I see that in the next 10 years, ham radio (particularly for HF) has the
potential to be revolutionized. Think of antennas such as the SteppIR and
all the automatic antenna tuners available. If it's cost effective for MFJ
to make and sell autotuners, it's got to be a commodity product. Because
it's my own area of expertise, I see increased use of adaptive
beamforming/nulling and electronically steered antennas, which have
historically been computationally limited, not RF performance limited.
The latest issue of QST has a "wireless" key for CW (Hmm.. is this a "RF
control link?".. well, it's above 220MHz). Why not remote the rig to the
antenna, and use a wireless LAN to talk to it and control it? So much for
running miles of coax. You could do this today with a TenTec Pegasus and
some off the shelf networking hardware. Heck, you could put the Pegasus, a
SteppIR controller, and everything else, in a box up on the top of the
tower, and run only AC power up the tower, then sit anywhere in your house
with a laptop and a 802.11 card.. (or a Palm , Treo, or Pocket PC)
Let's use all that cool stuff available!
Jim, W6RMK
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Jarvis" <jimjarvis@comcast.net>
>
> The NAFTA thread was interesting, if off-topic. Greater impact has
> come (silently) from the power of the PC and automation in the
> workplace, and the availability of cheap longhaul bandwidth to
> Asia, via satellite and undersea cable.
>
> This DOES have an on-topic component...we wouldn't be able to afford
> ham radios, if we didn't benefit from our international trade. Without
> surface mount devices and automated assembly, our radios would be
> spending a lot of time being repaired, if we could afford them in the
> first place.
>
> Jim Jarvis, N2EA
> Strategic Marketing Analysis-product positioning
> International Business Development
> Salesforce Development Programs
> n2ea@amsat.org
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> See: http://www.mscomputer.com for "Self Supporting Towers", "Wireless
Weather Stations", and lot's more. Call Toll Free, 1-800-333-9041 with any
questions and ask for Sherman, W2FLA.
>
> _______________________________________________
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_______________________________________________
See: http://www.mscomputer.com for "Self Supporting Towers", "Wireless Weather
Stations", and lot's more. Call Toll Free, 1-800-333-9041 with any questions
and ask for Sherman, W2FLA.
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