[TowerTalk] US Tower price increase

[Charles Farr]

I ponder where the steel used by US Towers, and others comes from. It 
makes little sense to me that raw and scrap materials are shipped to 
China and other countries, made into materials and then reshipped to the 
US. Also, just as Japan became an economic power post WWII, and famous 
for inferior quality, but now, that is no longer an issue. China has had 
the same image, but on about the same schedule, has overcome it as did 
Japan. I own a Korean car. 10 years ago, I would not have been caught 
dead in one.

The bottom line is that these materials now rival other world quality. 
We don't even realize where the steel, wood, or for that matter most of 
what we use came from. As the quality goes up so does the price. This 
will be an interesting year so say the least!

Chuck, W6AJW

On 01/02/2017 12:07 PM, W0MU Mike Fatchett wrote:
> It could be that they are making a lot more money selling to 
> commercial and government agencies and we trying to give hams a 
> break.  US Tower used to be owned by HRO,  I believe they still are.
>
> Tripling the price of something seems crazy though, maybe K7JA had too 
> much eggnog of the holidays and corrupted the web database or 
> something :).
>
> W0MU
>
> On 1/2/2017 12:38 PM, Jim Brown wrote:
>> Great response, Jim. BUT -- the increase noted by the original poster 
>> was that the increase was overnight!
>>
>> Several possible reasons for this. One is that business operations 
>> for the ham market are often supported by higher volume and higher 
>> margin operations for other markets. When those other markets fall 
>> apart, they no longer support the ham market, or contribute to 
>> economies of scale that allow lower prices.
>>