[TenTec] Jupiter taking a beating?

[Rob Atkinson, K5UJ]

I have some theories as to why TT gets beat up on.  First, I should say I do 
not own a Jupiter and have never seen one in operation.  Also, in general, 
the eham reviews lean towards getting wedge driven.  That means that one guy 
gets on there with a lot of anger (some widget he bought didn't do what he 
wanted it to do...he's mad about it) and the anger comes out as hyperbole.  
Another owner of same product retaliates with an extreme 5/5 review.  Others 
take sides.  And so we have a wedge driving the reviews to the 0/5-5/5 
margins. This has happened with a lot of different products.

1.  Some hams make their choice of equipment purchase an extension of their 
identity and that becomes an allegiance to a manufacturer, to an extent that 
it almost is like a religion.  They become hypersensitive to criticism of 
their rig(s) reacting emotionally as if they received a personal insult.  A 
few weeks ago a guy on an Icom list became very upset when someone mentioned 
that the Orion might give the ProII some competition.  In a twisted way, 
bashing TT becomes an agenda.  The decision to spend $3K or $4K on the JA 
rig must be defended so they can feel secure about their purchase.  These 
guys need to take a couple weeks off from ham radio.

2.  Personal computers, cordless phones, cell phones, and other component 
systems sold as turn-key products (you get everything you need as a package, 
get everything out of the box, hook it all up and it works) have made 
consumers accustomed to ease of operation.  Hams, especially those licensed 
after oh, around 1985 perhaps, may be apt to expect a ham station to work 
the same way.  Buy all this stuff, hook it all up, put up an antenna, 
everything should work fine.  Except ham stations (as we all know) don't 
always come together that easily due to a large number of variables from one 
site to the next.  Other companies may make their radios more idiot proof in 
some way, with some sacrifice of performance.  TT has always seemed to push 
the design envelope and perhaps that has resulted in some lack of robustness 
for great performance in some cases and they probably figure hams are 
willing to make the tradeoff.  Part of the hobby and the fun is supposed to 
be troubleshooting your system (getting rid of rf feedback for example) 
except it seems like more hams today (OTs included) expect everything they 
need in the box, and want it all to be perfect no matter what, and if that 
doesn't happen they jump on eham and vent.  Probably before even talking to 
the company about the problem I might add.  To that end, some of today's 
hams seem more like general consumers with very little patience compared to 
25 or 30 years ago.

Rob Atkinson
K5UJ
k5uj@hotmail.com

VI/3, Corsair II, Centurion, 238A



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