The AM Forum

RADIO BUSINESS: MORE LAYOFFS AT MOTOROLA

In business news, word that mobile radio and handset maker Motorola Inc. says that it will cut 4,000 more jobs in 2009. This, in addition to 3,000 it announced last year.

Some 3000 of those lost in the new round of layoffs will be in the mobile devices business. About 1,000 jobs are tied to corporate functions and other business units.

The company said the move will save about $700 million a year starting in 2009, and totaling $1.5 billion in annual savings when combined with the previous cut. The move is the latest in cost-cutting measures by Motorola, which has been struggling to revive its business in recent years. (Published reports)



Response by Motorola shop.

Hi All,
 
The "M" has not been with it since the V.P. wife was not able to use her cell phone while on vacation in the BAHAMAS.
 
This lead to the flying "BALLS IN THE SKY" debacle called IRIDIUM??
Start of the "M" problems to today problems, no engineering there that knows the real world.
 
When there is engineering back into the place, to have cutting edge product, then things will be profit driven again in products not flash and chrome.
 
Example is the noise problem with vocoder overload by external noise (CHAIN SAW, SIREN in background, ect),
is a 180 degree audio canceling system with (2nd audio channel) and auto notching filter before the vocoder
 is the approach to the digital vocoder audio failure to fix distorted TX audio.
 
 

I saw their quality go away in the mid 90s. Price stayed high. I knew it was just a matter of time. Then they started building stuff off shore which was real crap.
Another fine company destroyed by no talent bean counters.
Motorola made some of the highest quality components back in the '80s
Now all they make is excuses.

Yep totally agree.
Even had a new chance with mobile market.
Only results were disasters.

Just another fine example of outsourcing core talent to save money.
Maybe someday this country will wake up and put bean counters back it their place. 

When I worked for them in the 70s and 80s most of the components were built off shore in the Philippines, Taiwan, and South Africa.  They would send the components to FL for pagers and Schamburg for cell phones for final assembly. 

By doing the assembly in the US met the then standard of Made is the USA and they were so labeled.  When they decided to enter the cell market in a big way, they sold their collective souls.  That put them at the mercy of rapid consumer desires which meant recovery of costs had to be very fast. 

The Mocom 70 was built in an automatic plant in Ft. Worth, TX and the Micor line in Schamburg.  I don't know about the Maxar but its predecessor the Mocom 35 was from the Chicago area.  By the late 70s almost all components for the pager and hand held units came from off shore.  Something a lot of people didn't know is they had their own crystal department.  They grew the quartz, cut it and put it in holders.  They sold so many units before the synthesized radios they could do that profitably.

Jim, I worked in the test equipment lab the Schaumburg plant with Gary, WA9MZU/K6GLH. We built and maintained the specialized test equipment used in the plant. We also repaired all of the HP, Tec and other commercial test equipment used there.

That was right around the time the first Micors were being shipped, but still plenty of Motracs and Compa stations. That was also when Motorola tried getting in on the CB craze by introducing the MoCat.

I need to pass along one that still makes me laugh. During the final tests of the Motracs, the procedure was to whack the sides of the radio with a rubber mallet, looking for intermittents. They hired a new tester who used the mallet enthusiastically. *BAM* right on the rear heat sinks which contained the tubes. They did find the cause of the high failure rate fast enough.

I wish I still had access to the 40 foot wall of cabinets that stored almost every receiving tube known to mankind. Everything from 2A3s to Nuvistors.. Even the wire lead peanut tubes the early Motorola portable sets used. Crazy. All probably in a landfill somewhere.

There were still old pallets out back marked "Galvin Manufacturing Company". How old were they?

It's very likely the core talent that screwed up the company. They were stuck in the 60's and couldn't compete in the 80's. No different than many other companies.

I don't think so in the case of Motorola. They were into all kinds of  new stuff. back then. They had their high end  that went into government and public safety communications. First the commerical stuff got real cheap then everything else was built like crap. All of a sudden you couldn't even work on it because the snaps would break the first time you took it apart. We found the stuff coming out of the middle east the worst.
The company took a dive when Chris Galvin got in the diver's seat. He unloaded divisions till there was nothing left but cell phones and figured he could outsource everything else. I remamber a sales guy telling me he had a demo radio and part of his pitch was he would remove it from the mount and toss it across a parking lot. Then reinstall it and talk.  He couldn't use that approach with the new stuff. 
The service shops were just as bad. The biggest dirt bag usually got to be manager. Then he would beat the smartest people to death working them like dogs. Then Motorola sold all the shops to the dirt bags.

Bill my first 2 meter rig was a lunch box that I tuned down in frequency after buying some International Crystals for it.  The next thing I did is take a Motrac and a GLB synthesizer and interface the two, then later moved to a Micor.

One of the things that hurt shops is everytime them introduced a new line of equipment, they also introduced a new piece of expensive test equipment for that line.  

Motorola fostered a family attitude until the 80s when they moved into the cell phone markets.  They created a separate division just for that and the head did not promote the feeling with the other divisions.  Motorola, up into the 80s was the largest supplier of microwave gear and developed many innovations in land mobile.  I remember they introduced the digital carrier system in the early 90 which was the fruit of work done in the 80s.  

From then on, that was it.  Frank is very right about core talent screwing up the company.  One was the dis-embowelment of the semiconductor division.  They supplied many of the computer landline interface devices but let that fall in the ditch.  What a shame that such a fine company had to hire idiots to run it.

I remember when the guy in charge of the phones took all the 6811 CPUs for the phone line and shut down production on all radios and beepers.
Even from the bottom of the food chain everyone knew the company was run by idiots. I remember when our dirt bag bought the business. He wanted me to invest in his deal with no say or stake. I had all I could do to not laugh in his face. Motorola sold the shops about 3 months before my Son was born. As soon as they payed the insurance bill I found another job.
Anytime I have a bad day I always reset my brain by thinking I could still be working for that clown.

What a difference Frank. 
I owned an MSS in the Texas Panhandle and remember thinking that cell phones would put a dent in the land mobile business.  I sold the business in early 83 and went to Dallas.  From 83 to last of 84 I was service manager for the Dallas Service Center and from last of 84 until mid 87 manager of the Plano Road Center.  Our boss was a great person to work with. 

He gave us some inkling in the late 80s that the service department was going to go away in the future along with other departments.  He alluded to the fact Chris wanted the money from the sales of everything to get into the cell business in a big way.  I left in mid-87 and my boss left in the early 90s.  One of the managers at another facility found an investor and bought the 4 shops in the metroplex.

Then sometime in the late 90s I went by to see him.  He had closed two of the shops and was doing a lot of computer work to keep the doors open.  I haven't heard anything about the situation since.  When Bob Galvin ran the operation, it was a great place to work full of inventive people.  Sad that things had to work out the way they have.

Yes, the BAT.

I worked in MSS's (Motorola 2-way shops) from 1975 - 1977.  It was a good, respectable gig at the time. I enjoyed the experience and people who worked there. I even moved to San Jose, Calif to work in one out there.

The Micor, Motrac and the older units were nice to work on.  I also worked on the little HT's  and pagers. That was fun.

For me, the technical problems started when they introduced the Pulsar digital cellular telephone.Remember that big complicated mess?  I spent weeks studying those film strips and learning the manuals, but it was a very difficult unit for me to service well. I moved on after that, but feel this was the point when the technology was about to leave the "service to component" era and enter the board swap era. The industry started to change after that as discussed here.

Yes, Motorola was a great company in its heyday.

Tom, K1JJ

Well Tom, sadly the knowledgeable technician is not valued any more until some real difficult problem surfaces.  All of us have noted this trend and the people who use the AM mode and frequency this site are of that type.

I taught at a community college for 6 years after leaving Motorola and even there the family feeling is gone.  Much of it has to do with change.  As division director I insisted that AC and DC be taught in separate classes.  Today they are in one class taught in one semester.  Needless to say, the resulting students are very light on their troubleshooting skills.

But the businesses who employ this type of student has requested the change.  They tell the colleges they need someone who can think logically and follow the directions of the built in test equipment or computer hooked to the equipment.  The electronics department at the college were I worked is now morphing into a computer network interface with green energy equipment. 

They are busy developing curriculum around solar, wind and other "renewal" type of electric generation.  That is where our president is taking us and that is where the students will be for the next 8-10 years.

Gone are the days of the family type atmosphere.  When I worked at the Motorola shops, we tracked each technician to assure they billed at least 90% of the hours they were paid.  We received a computer print out of that each week along with our inventory status.  That procedure was fairly new and no one placed emphasis on firing techs who didn't meet the 90% standard.  That later changed.

In many ways I am glad that I am retired and out of the work force.  I get real sad when I see some of the stuff that goes on in todays work world, Motorola in particular. 

I worked in a private land mobile service shop in the late 80's early 90's. We serviced the county sheriff's department, local police and same day fire service. Mostly Motorola and some GE equipment.
It seemed to me what hurt the big M was the Japanese competition from Icom and Kenwood. You could buy 2 or 3 Icom HT's for the cost of a single Motorola. If one broke you could literally toss it, buy another, and be money ahead.

You make my point. Moto was so used to working on gov/mil contract and they got fat. They didn't know how to compete in the commercial world.

I accounted for 100% bench time until I found the office bimbo diverting some of my time to a noload who fixed radios by pounding on them.
I loved whatching these clowns when they had any Fed work. They lived in fear because the local Fed inspector didn't miss a beat. He was a great guy and demanded perfection.
The shop I worked in, one other guy knew ohm's law...and it wasn't the manager. AC theory yes turn the knob this way and get forward power and turn the knob the other way to get reflected. anything better than 3:1 and you are done.
Motorola just kept raising the hourly rate and managers replaced talent with cheap help to keep labor costs down.
When I wouldn't invest in the shop our moron bought he dropped my pay a buck an hour. I bit my lip for three months waiting for the hospital bill to be paid then split.  It cost him at least $2 an hour screwing me out of $1.
Chris destroyed that company. He should have been married to HP Carley.

What happens when you outsource stuff.

This related to a product that I designed while working in Taiwan.
It was put into production in a country not to far from there.
The product was suffering badly from faults and resulted in returns from overseas customers, maybe real close to your home town.

The problem was due to faulty electrolytic caps from a supplier that was co located, you guessed it, over there.

We asked our own factory to stop using those caps and they refused.
So I went over at the request of the owner.
The factory manager made it clear that he was getting a good kick back from the guy who supplied them and refused to change and challenged me and the factory owner to do anything about it.
I realized that the company owned the factory but we had to except that junk as nothing could be done.

When you outsource stuff you have no control over what you get, you may think you do but I was personally taught, by experts, how to defeat the best of QC inspections. They even divert trucks on the way from the factory to the ship and do repacks shipping and QC labels and all.
And we are still dumb enough to by it " cause its cheaper"

Things went South for Motorola when junk like the MICOR came into being. There used to be extraordinary quality in Motorola stuff years ago and worth the higher price coz it always worked. We saw things go down hill in their Microwave radio line. They just couldn't compete for the quality and service. Soooo we spent an extra half million for NEC.

We are doing quite well in our Kenwood 2-way sales. People are tired of paying twice the price.

Fred

Seems rather ironic, but I think the cellular revolution is doing them in.  Not much of a market, or not nearly as much of a market now for two-ways, when they can do the same thing with cell phones and IDEN phones which work like PTT walkie talkies.

At the Telco, we dealt with Motorola in a big way for many years for mobile tel and paging businesses.  They were first class to deal with and built quality products.  But now the old IMTS mobile tel and paging systems are either long gone or going that way fast and just too many others are making cell phones and associated equipment.
Our 2-way 450 MHz maintenance radio stuff (mostly GE) also was largely replaced with cell phones and mobile terminals.  We never used Motorola microwave...always used Lenkurt and Collins...and later NEC and Fujitsu.

73, Jack, W9GT

Kinda off topic but interesting, I think. In the mid to late 70's the State of California Highway Patrol needed new radios and the state put it out for bid.
The radio needed was a vehicular repeater. The CHP uses low band land mobile and a low band HT would need to be huge to have the power to communicate in fringe areas. The repeater wanted, would be VHF high band between the officer and vehicle and low band vehicle to dispatch.
For some reason the contract went to GE for the high band and Motorola for the low band radios. A modified GE Master Exec II QRP rig and a Micor 100 watt low band rig. GE provided the VHF HT and the interconnect cabling was a joint venture.
Every service call would bring a GE and Motorola service tech. Competition was high at the time. I can just imagine the cooperation between the techs and the money California must have paid back than for this kludge must have been staggering.
Hundreds of those radios went to surplus in the late 80's. I picked one up and moved the Master Exec to UHF at 100 watts and the Micor went to six meters. It still works today.

Wait till people see the price on 2-ways the Chinese are offering.  Kenwood and the like will be the next to fall.


I can't believe they can sell this for $20.30 buy-it now (+ $38 shipping)

$38 shipping?

If they're shipping the things directly from China, I'll be they're *not* FCC type accepted and hence illegal to use in the USA.

I think there's been a lot of non type accepted stuff for sale there.  There used to be a guy selling all sorts of Chinese SS amps HF/VHF, what have you.  I asked him more than once (very politely, too!) if the stuff was type accepted, and never got a reply.  I suspect there was an answer in there.  He seems to have disappeared, so either he sold everything from his container load or maybe got shown the door ...

Regency and Wilson tried this type of thing back in the 70s.  Where are they today.  There always will be a market for quality products, quality service and reliability.  Motorola has a pretty large portion of the government market, I wonder about the petroleum market.

Since when do the Chinese worry about illegal. They sell tons of knock off copies of various electronics. Then there's the huge software pirating action. If someone buys it, they will sell it.

I naively though that stuff was supposed to be seized at customs..

Yea, and all the people in this country go through Immigration too. ;)

Made in china not welcome at this QTH

Better keep the ChiComs happy Frank, they are one of largest holders of US debt.
And unless I read my compass wrong, they are going to be asked to buy a boatload more.

They basically "give" us the money to buy their crap from them.
Puts US workers out of business, closes down factories, etc.
If I didn't know better, I'd swear Wal-Mart was a very shrewd ChiCom plot to destroy the US infrastructure.  :-[

Lenovo didn't need to "knock off" IBM Thinkpads.  IBM paid them to do it, and then Lenovo eventually got rid of the middleman.

If a Chinese brand and a Motorola brand are made at the same factory, on the same assembly line, is the Chinese brand a "knock off"?  Americans are fooling themselves if they believe there is a difference based on the name stamped on the plastic.

I wasn't talking about Lenovo. I was talking about copies, illegal ones at that. Two different scenes.

Walmart sells tons of stuff not made in China. Stop falling for the one-liner slogans chanted by haters.

Good thing I know that you are kidding, you're much smarter than that Steve.

Let's see how much is made in the good old USA at Wal-Mart...


$18 billion from China, that's in 2004 -->> http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-11/29/content_395728.htm

$27 billion in 2006 -->> http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/ib235/

$36 billion from China, $3 billion to China -->> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/china/trade.html

PSB -->> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/china/trade.html

Even Fast Company, no friend of the left, is alarmed at the Wal-Mart trend --->> http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html?page=0%2C0

I know, but in the context of the Chinese HT, it's not pretending to be a Motorola, so it's not a "knock off" and it might actually be made at the same plant and have the same quality as a Kenwood.  That was my point.  Of course, the Panasonic branded stuff they sell in NYC with Panasonic spelled wrong is another story.

That said, some of the Chinese stuff is too crude for US consumption.  The Chinese iPhone look-alike's are rich in hardware features, but the OS and bundled software is a joke.  IMHO, US software is still king.  For now...

Walmart is not totally to blame when American, Japanese and Korean companies are having their stuff subcontracted out to be make in China.

My only choice ever was Motorola. I only sent out one package my senior year in 1979. It was Mot or nuthin.

I sent a big letter to Motorola when I was a senior at RIT and basically demanded that they send somebody up to my school to interview us. I kept up the pressure and finally they gave in and sent a guy up to look at this new fangled Co-Op program. You see I had mentioned that we had a lot of kids who were Co-ops and they wanted to work in radio industry every other quarter and teased them by saying that most were going to Harris RF Communications which was in town (Rochester). Now Northeastern and RIT had been doing Co-op for 75 years, but Motorola did not really know what it was. Anyway, this guy shows actually up and interviews several of the guys in the BET program that I was in.

Next thing you know I am the newest engineer at a brand new plant in Plantation FL and they are bringing Co-op students down regularly. I had a ball in the special products group doing mostly spook stuff, modifying gear for the feds.  Business was booming and in fact we built a big paging plant in Boca the second year I was there. This campus was fantastically managed and we were on our game. We were just coming out of a recession and salaries were low to start, but within two years I got more than 12K upward adjustment (that would be like 30K today in two years). This was high living for a kid.

My XYL could not stand south FL though, so we moved to New England which was booming with jobs and I found out about the real world - defense contractors, crappy start ups, ancient mismanaged companies. I always regretted leaving Mot. Little did I know that the beancounterculture and a lack of vision and innovation to be replaced by six sigma crap had occurred at Mot and the fantastic management that I had known, was basically gone by the early 1990's. Gone baby - never to return.

Mike WU2D

By the way Fred. The sensodyne design in the Micor which uses two complete IF chains to eliminate noise in real time, along with fantastic stage shielding, expensive filters, a great conversion scheme and ultra low noise oscillators puts it ahead of any other FM receiver specifically designed for the 25 kHz channel of the day. Most of its specifications are beyond measurement in a typical radio shop.

Of course I have installed and removed a bunch of them from vehicles and they are horrible to deal with, big heavy, jammed keys, bent covers, cut release arms, the stupid push-in control head connectors that cut your hands and huge cables. But you can learn a lot from that receiver design! A few of the Micor designers had relocated to south Florida as they reached retirement age in the early 1980's and I got to meet some of them.

I also met the guy who designed the uglyst handheld radio ever made since WW2 - the HANDIE-COM. I think it was the Brits who wanted a "cheap" hand held and did not think the HT-220 was worth the price that drove the gem. The railroad guys bought tons of these for the 20 - 25 MHz range with donky-D**K antennas.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Motorola-Handie-Com-HM10_W0QQitemZ140291160289QQcmdZViewItemQQptZ2_Way_Radios_FRS?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116 

Geeze for only 23 bucks look what you get!

Mike WU2D

A high school buddy of mine tried building an HT-220 from scratch, ordering the case and other parts a bit at a time from Motorola parts. He had found someone selling the blank PC boards at a hamfest.

After six months of intense and frustrating labor, he lost it and took a hammer to his project.

I don't know how they built the things in the factory to begin with!

No, I wasn't kidding. And yes, I am smarter thant that. I looked at another number you skipped. Total sales - $375 billion. See how big it is. See how small the China numbers are in comparison. I rest my case.

$1 is too much for me

Well, you just violated your own rule. You are using a computer made in China. Come out of your ivory tower and join the real world.

When given a choice I always pick made in USA.
When I leave the ivory tower I like to wear shoes

Shoes made in China. ;)  And then you get in your truck with parts made in China.  Don't you feel dirty?

I feel very dirty for what my country has evolved into

Didn't Motorola & Yaesu join forces?
I also heard about some sort of recall on the latest Yaesu high end tranceiver--I haven't heard one of the 9000 series on the air. Could these events be related?
Skip

From Today's News

------------------------------------------

Motorola loses $3.6B, suspends dividend, CFO exits

February 3, 2009

NEW YORK - Motorola Inc. posted a massive fourth-quarter loss Tuesday as it recorded charges to reflect the dwindling value of its cell phone business. The maker of telecommunications equipment also suspended its dividend and announced the departure of its chief financial officer.
Its stock tumbled 11 percent.
Motorola lost $3.6 billion, or $1.57 per share, in the fourth quarter.
(snip)

You'll find many 9000's being operated during high end contests. You would have wasted your money using this rig mainly for local ragchews. Initial introduction of any rig into the marketplace can sometimes be bumpy.

I've heard plenty of the 9000s on the air, several on AM.

Motorola is on the way to becoming the next RCA.
Where's Paul and Bob Galvin?

They produced Chris

Chris is right up there with Edsel Ford.

Is this the Motorola Deathwatch?
sheeesh...tough crowd.

Zzzzzzz. How boring.

Where Motorola Blew It 

Business Week

The mobile-phone giant has lost its footing because the wireless industry has changed and the company hasn't kept up

By Jonathan L. Yarmis

Motorola's stunning quarterly loss is just the latest development in the company's long, inexorable decline from the very apex of the cell-phone market. Motorola (MOT), which effectively defined "Cell Phone 1.0," consistently missed the trends that have fundamentally changed the mobile-phone industry. Now, Motorola is teetering on the very edge of irrelevance. Does it even have a chance?

Cell Phone 1.0 was effectively defined by Motorola's groundbreaking Razr phone. The Razr defined the phone as fashion instrument and status statement. It also had an unusually long run with a near-monopoly on its form factor. Nokia (NOK) and others were slow to realize the affinity American consumers had for the clamshell form factor and the Razr's dramatically thin profile. However, as the cell-phone market was evolving toward Cell Phone 2.0, Motorola clung stubbornly to its old success, trying to recreate the magic with a succession of devices such as the Rokr, the Krazr, and the Lozr. O.K., that last one wasn't really a Motorola product introduction, but it might as well have been.

The evolution of the cell phone from 1.0 to 2.0 is all about the change from device to platform. While Apple's (AAPL) iPhone is certainly the best example of this transition, many of the other players in the market have been focused on this for a long time. What are the characteristics of a platform as compared with a device?

• Software

• Applications

• Ecosystem

• Experience

Motorola's track record in these areas is spotty at best—virtually nonexistent. Who's defining this new approach? For the most part, the key players are companies with little or no experience in cell phones. Instead, they come from the computer industry. Leading the way are Apple and Google (GOOG), which has championed the Android operating system for which anyone can develop applications. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) is rapidly trying to evolve in this direction, and Nokia has made significant, albeit largely unrewarded, efforts in the past few years. Microsoft (MSFT) and Palm (PALM) are also still relevant in this discussion.

Against this backdrop, Motorola has very few attractive options. The company's early commitment to the Windows Mobile platform, with the Q, has brought it no reward, and Microsoft's current challenges don't seem to offer a lifeline. Motorola has said that it plans to invest more resources in phones that use Google's Android, but the operating system is still in its early days. Given a fractured operating system platform, no clear partnership opportunity, and limited software expertise of its own, Motorola is likely to struggle for the foreseeable future.

The company has said that it plans to spin off its mobile-phone division, separating it from the company's other operations. But it's hard to see how such a structural change will address the enormous challenges at the company. With few available dance partners and an outdated strategy, Motorola has no clear path to return to its former glory.

Jonathan Yarmis is founder and principal analyst with the Yarmis Group, an independent analyst group.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2009/tc2009023_706976.htm?campaign_id=yhoo (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2009/tc2009023_706976.htm?campaign_id=yhoo)

They died in the late '90s. They are just running out of divisions to sell off to look good for the present quarter.

Did everyone on this board work for Moto at one time or another?

In the early 80's they bought a computer company I worked for,. Four-Phase Systems. They made bonehead mistake after bonehead mistake running it until it was no more.  They left it without a CEO for 1 year.  They shut down the Silicon Valley hardware engineering in favor of some guys in Tempe, AZ who built the sorriest excuses for computers I ever worked on, etc.  And this was when the company was being run by the old heroes, Bob Galvin, Mitchell and Weiss.

I went to work for Sun Micro which got even by sending them Ed Zander.

JEK does the name Messino ring a bell from Sun?

Moto is on track to go the way of RCA.

BTW, I use a Moto Razr flip phone. I love the thing. Its RF performance is excellent, durable, its small, drops into any pocket and the battery lasts days without recharging. I felt like Captain Kirk talking on the thing at first.

Yes it does.  I'm sure I worked with him.  Now if I could just remember what we were doing.  His first name is Steve, isn't it?

Jon

Wow,
Steve and I were High School friends. He just lost his Mom last Summer and we had a few beers after it was over. I had not seen him in 20 years. We pass a joke email once in a while. I visited him out there in '74 and came home with my first 4-1000A. We had a blast for about 3 weeks. He told me he worked for Sun a while. fc

My first job after getting married and moving to Florida was with Motorola in Plantation.  I worked in a screen cage doing final test (mostly repair) of the 450mhz 6 channel hand-held radios they were pumping out for Chicago Public Safety contract.  Was 1971-1972, I was burned out after about a year, as the people hand-assembling them were incompetent and almost every one had to be disassembled and repaired in order to make spec.  Went on to do computer software development at STP Corporation in North Fort Lauderdale for Andy Granatelli.

Andy and the Jet Indy car...cool

Yep, that STP Turbine Car sat on display in the front lobby of the headquarters offices on Commercial Blvd in Ft. Laud.   Walked past it every morning.

I had the same feeling walking next to an SR71.....I always walked around it once and touched it a couple times.

One of those landed at Davis Monthan in Tucson in the mid 60s.  Back then I believe it was classified as YF-12A, prior to the SR-71 designation.  It was surrounded by armed guards, could not get within 100 feet of it.

They had one sitting in the Skunk Works parking lot just inside the gate.
I heard they wanted to give it away. I wanted it for my front yard but I had to provide the transportation. There is a parking lot full of them next to the Palmdale Ca. FAA building. I have not been there in a few years but they had a bunch of different planes parked there. A big open air exibit.
You were lucky to see it in the '60s.
A pair of the most beautiful sounding P&W motors.
Right up there with a B17  at idle on a damp chilly morning

Rick said:
I thought I read somewhere that it was originally designed as nuc delivery platform. But when they realized just how fast it would go, that it would never be able to carry out its intended purpose with any accuracy. So why not a super-fast camera ;)

I spent 6 months working at the old Chelsea Proving Grounds in Michigan in 1993. This was Chryslers famous first test area and the place that the Abrams tank engine turbine was developed and all of the great MOPARS. One of the driver mechanics took me to see a turbine car that they had restored in one of the mod buildings. It was under a yellow cover. Apparently Chrysler made a small fleet of these turbine cars in 1963. Not many exist now, most were crushed, but the only practical use was that of the Tank engines.

These guys said, Mike you want to see it run? I said yeah but after seeing the engine which looked like an atom bomb and the batmobile louvers out the back, I walked a distance away as they fired up the 24VDC starter motor wound it up to 12K and and touched off the JP-3 jet fuel (which was what the car runs on). Holy Holy Holy is all I can say.

Mike WU2D

I remember seeing the turbine car in a Chrysler dealer in Jenkintown, PA back then.  One spark plug.  My dad was a Desoto fan/owner.

YF12has suposed to deliver pheonix missile to any plane coming this way. YF12 has a turning radius of 200 miles so no dog fighter. SR71 was designed to take pictures and out run anything coming at it. A pair of 100 foot flames of burning tar "JP7"
F14 got the missile.
X51 is supposed to fly soon at twice the speed.

Also it is pretty hard to get a bomb off a plane at M3. Tends to bounce back off the shock wave and hit the plane. I would imagine opening a bay door could also be a chore.