[TowerTalk] New antenna system

[David Robbins K1TTT]

> Two of my neighbors with SteppIR products, WA6DKN and W6EIJ, have both
had
> to replace their controllers.  That was relatively painless, as
SteppIR's
> service was good, and the controllers go "in the shack," so don't
require
> much work to replace.  But why did they both experience a 100% failure
> rate,
> with gear in service for only months and not years?

A sample of 2 does not a valid set of statistics make, unless that is
the whole universe.  How many others do you know who did not have them
fail?  

As for the early failures... The phenomena of 'infant mortality' in
electronics is well known and documented.  In any reasonably complex
electronic device more failures happen in the first few months than just
about the whole rest of the expected life of the device.  In many cases
there is also a sudden rise in failures after some long period due to
predictable ageing of some components... this leads to the infamous
'bathtub' curve for electronics failure rates.  High in the beginning,
low for a long time in the middle, and rising relatively sharply near
the end.



David Robbins K1TTT
e-mail: mailto:k1ttt at arrl.net
web: http://www.k1ttt.net
AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://dxc.k1ttt.net