[TenTec] Scale Of Eagle Production

[terry foskey]

Eagle numbers at $1600 per unit.  Thats a stoudt price point when comparing to an Icom 7300.
How many units to produce meaningful funding for R&D expansion?
Let's assume $300 or $500 profit per unit (thats after Overhead, Labor and Materials), 100 unit run, that's $30 to $50K in profit.  Probably optimistic numbers.

Let's assume the R&D cost per engineering hour is $100 per hour, you are looking at 300 to 500 hours being produced from a 100 unit run.  What can be engineered from 300 to 500 hours of R&D funding?  Certainly not something which is far afield from existing products.
This is my point,  is it better to somehow take this down time, take profit from other commercial products and use the profit on a quick R&D effort to revamp an existing product or use the time to produce a radio with limited demand? Then take more time (if the Eagle sells) to make something for next year.
If you want to produce something now, make Alpha Wattmeters, Amplifiers, TenTec manual Tuners, accessories, etc....Figure out which products will sell with the largest profit margin and go for it.

I applaud Mike's efforts and I will support TenTec but not via an Eagle purchase.  I don't believe the Eagle has the feature set being sought by customers.
N5TF,Terry