[TenTec] Radio Manufacturing Economics Vs Technology (long)

[Duane Grotophorst]

It was interesting how what had started out as a
simple question about frequency stability evolved into
a discussion about manufacturing economics. Well now I
can’t help but weigh in with some thoughts of my own.

Soapbox On:

I’ve seen several references in various places about
how light weight and empty the newer Tec Tec radio
boxes are.  Sparse board and component counts are not
necessarily a bad thing, in fact it can be good.  I’ve
noticed that the imported radio manufactures seem to
design by adding more and more components until they
get the thing to work.  In the end there is indeed
lots of parts in the radio, but there is a threshold
where gains by adding more parts is offset by
exponential growth of undesirable interactions between
many of those parts.  When I look inside the Pegasus I
marvel at the clever simplicity of the overall design.
 I’m especially impressed by the lack of
interconnecting wires between the circuit boards that
translates into improved reliability.  That said I do
find myself being frustrated by the observation that
if Ten Tec had put another $50 worth of component
parts into the Pegasus it would have been easily worth
a $200 higher selling price.  Simply because it would
then perform just about as good as any of the current
crop of top end radios out there do, and still be much
less expensive.

I saw another comment about software defined radio
designs only being desirable for manufacturing cost
reasons instead of functionality or performance.  This
is partially true today, especially in terms of
performance, however I do believe that we are now on
the cusp of where that will soon not be true.  I
expect that upcoming generation of software defined /
DSP radios will exceed traditional designs in overall
performance.  I really do hope that TT is working on
new designs beyond the 16bit A/D - D/A, ADSP21xx based
products they’ve sold so far.  As for the
functionality point of view I can easily see how
someone could come to that conclusion if all that was
done was to build yet another radio with the same old
big tuning knob and a bunch of buttons and switches a
couple meters and frequency display readouts.  Where
the software defined radio concept will shine is doing
some new things that simply weren’t possible before,
in order for that to happen though you must really
think outside of the box, literally.  Unfortunately
for the most part the ham radio population isn’t
willing to do that yet (sigh).

An area that this new world of software defined radios
is deeply dependent on is good developer software
support, I think that was one of Kachina’s main points
of failure with the 505.  They started with a great
idea but didn’t advance it with good developer support
or aggressive user interface software development of
their own.  Ten Tec has done a slightly better job
with this, but where are the 32 bit libraries, core
function DLL’s (or their non-Windows equivalents) for
the third party software developers to work with? 
Also while the TT supplied control program for the
Pegasus/Jupiter is functional, it does beg for greater
innovation, something harder to do with its 16bit
language underpinnings.

One thing that I wish all manufactures would do is
make life easier to get usable connections to low
level TX signals (with proper ALC) for transverter
work, provide more robust isolated keying capability
for external amplifiers, aux RX inputs, etc.  If not
making those kinds of things readily available on the
back panel at time of manufacture they could at least
provide the holes for several additional connectors on
the back panel and also provide appropriate connector
pins internally on the circuit boards, this would add
very little production cost.  They could then offer
optional kits to enable those capabilities as needed. 
I do understand that many users may never need some of
those kinds of connections but at least make life
easier for those of us who do.  For the Pegasus I had
to go digging inside the radio for low level TX and
for aux RX input, it was doable but sure isn’t
elegant.  Also maybe I’m old fashioned, but I want
either relay or optocoupler isolation for my external
amplifier (or transverter) keying needs.

Soap Box Off:

73
Duane
N9DG



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Send your FREE holiday greetings online!
http://greetings.yahoo.com