[TenTec] The New TenTec

[Jim Brown]

Wayne and Eric have a strong resemblance to Al Kahn (K4FW) and Jack 
Burchfield (K4UJ), the two guys who made Ten Tec what it WAS. I strongly 
suspect that, while neither is getting rich, Elecraft is profitable, 
sufficiently so to be able to fund strong customer support and ongoing 
R&D. Eric is the business and marketing guy, but both are engineers. In 
the 12 years I've been paying attention, I haven't seen a single dumb 
move. Roughly 10 years ago, they showed a couple of big power amps at a 
few ham events, but the designs weren't good enough, and they started 
over. The result was the KPA500, which has proven to be a very nice amp.

Some of the best things about Elecraft are that they do their best to 1) 
allow their customers to buy as many features as they need or can 
afford, by making the product modular; 2) allow their customers to 
upgrade their products by adding modules; 3) expand capabilities by 
upgrading the firmware that runs the radio; and 4) LISTEN to their 
customers.

As a result of 1, 2, and 3, I was able to upgrade the two K3s that I 
bought in 2008 to bring them up to 90% of the performance improvements 
offered by their new K3S, introduced in 2015, simply by replacing three 
boards in each radio. With all other ham rigs, I would have had to sell 
my old radio and buy a new one. (Three boards because they have two 
receivers -- a radio without the second RX would require only two 
boards).  The new boards were a new synthesizer that reduces phase noise 
on both TX and RX by about 10 dB, and a new transceiver interface board 
that adds replaces the original preamp with one that has far better 
performance on 12, 10, and 6M. I could have replaced the I/O board, 
which adds a USB interface that does both control and carries audio I/O, 
but chose not to.  The three boards I installed in each radio cost about 
$650 per radio. Compare that with the cost of selling an Orion I and 
buying an Orion II.

And just as Ten Tec employed a lot of people in TN, Elecraft employs 
both people around Santa Cruz, CA who work at their factory/office, and 
other engineers who mostly work at home. Some of this I know because 
many are my neighbors. :)

Elecraft is also doing some things you may not realize. As we age, most 
of us have either already downsized to live in places where it's hard to 
have a good antenna farm (or any antennas at all), and those of us who 
haven't will eventually if we don't die first. About 4 years ago, after 
a lot of R&D, Elecraft introduced a K3/0 control head that could be used 
to run a K3 remotely. This spring, I heard an excellent talk by one of 
the Elecraft support techs about 3-4 different ways that hams can 
operate other stations remotely. Only one of those ways was with the 
paid "Remote Ham Radio" stations, and not all needed the K3/0 control head.

Elecraft also makes some very nice compact radios and radios designed 
for QRP and backpacking.  Their KX2 (80-10M) and KX3 (160-6M) are state 
of the art radios, but both are super compact, lightweight, have a 
built-in battery pack (AA batteries), and draw very little current on RX.

AND -- they sell their products directly to hams, like the old Ten Tec. 
No markup by dealers who do nothing but receive boxes and ship them.

I'm posting this because I view Elecraft as TODAY'S version of the Ten 
Tec that Al and Jack built back in the '70s. For those who don't know, 
Al Kahn started Ten Tec with his share of the return from selling 
Electro-Voice (I'm guessing because his partner, co-founder Lou 
Burroughs wanted out). Ten Tec's factory opened across the street from 
EV's factory. Al's obit noted that, behind the scenes and without 
fanfare, EV helped keep ARRL going during WWII and did a lot to support 
Heathkit.

73, Jim K9YC

On Sat,9/24/2016 12:36 PM, Jim Allen wrote:
> Look at Wayne and Eric.  After 18 years of relentless effort, they have become an overnight success.  Their radios are in the shacks of thousands and thousands of serious, dedicated, well heeled contesters and DXers, and are used on virtually all major DXpeditions.  Wayne Burdick had a track record of well received designs of QRP gear.  I have no idea whether they have made any money or not.