[TenTec] The Eagle Reviews

[Kris Merschrod]

Amen, again to Mike's commentary on the deadly reviews.

I still have my Delta II and hauled it all over Latin America on jobs.  I 
love it. QST reviewers gave the Delta II a bad review.  The Argo model is a 
beauty.

I just liked the idea of the Jones Filter and instant scratch pad and all of 
those 48 memories! And it was made in the US of A.

After the QST competition for HB low cost solidstate linears, they should go 
for the a commercial under $500 tranceiver.  The advertisers might abandon 
ship?  Where could they go, it is about the only ship in the harbor.

Kris KM2KM



Merschrod
123 Warren Road
Ithaca, NY 14850
www.merschrod.net
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "mike bryce" <prosolar at sssnet.com>
To: "Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment" <tentec at contesting.com>
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2010 11:52 AM
Subject: Re: [TenTec] The Eagle


This has been an interesting thread. It got me out of the shadows.

I haven't looked it up but in 1978 the triton was someplace around $700 
stripped with no noise blanker or cw filters, analog version.

today that's about over two grand.

take all the stuff  out of a a radio that is so common like dual vfos, 
memories, and the other controls and dohickies is like shooting yourself in 
the foot while standing in a room full of gasoline fumes.

the IC 718 is priced around $600-$700 (Before you shoot me. I didn't look up 
the prices on line, but I'm close)

Even if Ten Tec could hit the $500 mark, make a few few bucks, the reviewers 
would rip the rig apart simply because it DOESN'T have the thingiees and 
dohickies we've come to accept as 'normal.'

Can't you just hear the QST reviewer saying something like. "The new entry 
radio from Ten Tec disappointed us because it lacked the basic dual VFO 
design of its competitors. To market a radio that won't allow split 
operation on the HF bands is beyond our thinking."

Especially, if the competition had all those features and was only $100 
more.

Sure Ford could come out with a automobile without power steering, power 
brakes, power windows. No radio. A three speed manual tranny, no AC and on 
and on. You'd get four wheels a steering wheel and three cylinder engine. 
( I don't recall the name of the car, but it's being build in India. That 
car is so stripped down, it only has one windshield wiper.)

All the engineering costs have already been done. Just slap it together in a 
old Pinto body and sell that sucker for $5k less than anyone else.

 Would ford sell any? Sure I'd bet they would—until Motor Trend did the 
review.

As for the cost driver? I don't know. I do know that with less than one 
million hams in the usa, we're just a pebble along a creek bank. Out of that 
many, how many buy new radios? And with the slice of pie so thin,  and your 
competitors all trying for a piece of that  slice, a company has to make 
money quickly.

besides actual production cost in labor, parts, engineering  (someone still 
has to prove the whole shebang works together even with other proven 
designs) there are test jigs, burn in time, spare parts have to be purchased 
and money spent on getting the okay from the FCC.

And after you do all that. One crappy review will doom the radio. All 
together now, let's say 'Argonaut II' (To refresh your memory. QST ripped 
the argonaut II because it didn't have the I/O port (among other problems 
they sited ) that the Delta II had. Ten Ten added it later. That review 
killed the Argonaut II)


Mike, WB8VGE
SunLight Energy Systems
The Heathkit Shop
http://www.theheathkitshop.com/
J e e p
o|||||||o
Note: No trees were killed in the sending of this message, but a large 
number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced



On Sep 26, 2010, at 9:12 PM, Louis Ciotti wrote:

> I say yes this can be build... if you strip the eagle down to bare 
> minimum,
> and have only a the simple controls that the older rigs, how can it not be
> built.  Strip off the DSP, and have fixed filters.  Most of the circuitry
> has already been designed.  The Output PA is done, the VFO is done, Audio
> portion is done, all that is really needed is to repackage it.  I am 
> talking
> about a basic HF transceiver here.  No Split, no memories, to dual VFOs, 
> no
> fancy multi color display, no IF port, just something simple to get people
> on the air.
>
> The Tentec Triton has the following controls:
>
> Band
> AF gain
> RF Gain
> Drive
> ALC
> Resonate
> Offset
> Mode (SSB, SSB-R, CW 1, CW 2, Tune)
> VFO
>
> With the modern designs this can be dropped to:
>
> AF Gain
> RF Gain
> ALC
> Mic Gain
> Offset
> Mode (Same modes)
> VFO
>
> That is 7 knobs.
>
> How can this not be build in a production environment and be sold for 
> under
> $500 and make a profit?  Like I said most of the electronic design work 
> has
> been done already, so where is the real cost driver here?
>

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