[TenTec] Orion 2 situation

[Stuart Rohre]

These days the production lifetime of semiconductors is extremely short 
compared to the life time for tube designs back in the day.

When key integrated circuits or custom designed chips are no longer 
supported by the vendor, or the vendor closes down, or is bought out, 
and their lines discontinued or altered, there is not much a 
manufacturer can do but drop a product that has too many of the devices 
that become obsolete or much higher priced.  Designs are much more 
integrated in solid state; but there were examples of tube designs that 
could not continue with original tube selections.  As recently as Yaesu 
FT 101 rigs, a sweep tube became unavailable, and a conversion to the 
venerable 6146 at higher cost had to be made.

Final bi polar power RF transistors have had a stormy, rocky road of 
lifetime.  With the demise of Motorola many mainstays of the RF world of 
finals were taken away, and then the reorganization of Philips 
semiconductor manufacturing, altered the market in Europe and much of 
the world.

Unless a semiconductor was widely used by the military groups of the 
world, it may not have a long lifetime.  A few of the standard logic 
families widely used in government projects were picked up for sustained 
supply by Lansdale Semiconductor, to support legacy equipment.

It almost seems before designing a new radio, the engineer needs to 
assess the fiscal stability of the transistor makers, the long term 
outlook for that logic or RF family, and only then see if, oh by the 
way, something might be good enough for the circuit design.

-Stuart Rohre
K5KVH