[Amps] Amplifier lifetime

[Manfred Mornhinweg]

_Good_ equipment and machinery should be designed and built well enough 
to work all the way until becoming obsolete, which is when the owner 
decides to replace it because new-technology equipment simply performs 
better, is more efficient, more portable, etc.

Anything that needs to be replaced because it wore out before something 
better became available to replace it, was inadequately built or 
designed, unless it was abused instead of used.

However we should not extend these rules to parts and things that by 
their nature are wear items. Then again, even wear items might in many 
cases be designed and built to last long enough. For example, consider 
brake pads for cars: They are certainly wear items, but it should be 
possible to make them thick enough so that they will last until the car 
is totally obsolete. And a better car wouldn't have brake pads, relying 
instead on purely regenerative, wear-free brakes. Some wear items are 
unavoidable, though.

We can apply all of this to ham gear. That's for example where PIN diode 
switching comes in, and solid state instead of tubes.

Unfortunately even the best design can't totally rule out premature 
equipment failure due to freak failure of components, let alone 
accidents or mis-use. That's why good equipment should also be designed 
to be repair-friendly, and adequate service manuals should be made 
available.

I fully realize that what I just wrote clashes against the business 
practices of many modern companies, which operate under the principle of 
making desirable-looking products that are designed to fail soon after 
the guarantee expires, and making them as hard as possible to repair, in 
order to force people to throw them away and buy new ones. But I don't 
consider those to be good products, and whenever I have any choice, I 
buy those that are designed to work without failures until naturally 
becoming obsolete. And sometimes I build my own instead of buying 
something ready-made.

Manfred


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