Ten Tec on High End Government Rcvrs. by W8ZR

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WA1HZK:

I found this note about TT on the Premium RX list. I thought some others might be interested.
Keith
WA1HZK



Hi Gang,

I thought you might be interested in a bit of history I learned yesterday from a Ten-Tec executive. We were talking about the Ten-Tec RX-340 receiver, and I observed how similar the panel layout was to the Watkins-Johnson WJ-8711A and HF-1000 (which I owned for several years). Turns out there's quite a story behind that similarity.

                In 1991 the NSA, which buys many high-end HF receivers for surveillance purposes, decided that the cost per receiver was too high. The NSA put together a study group to try and bring the cost down to the $7K-$10K range. At that time, the high end HF receiver market was dominated by Watkins-Johnson, Racal, and Cubic, and Ten-Tec wanted to join the group.

                Ten-Tec and Watkins-Johnson engineers worked together for a year to define specifications for the NSA's "radio of the future," which would meet the NSA' target price guidelines. The team finally agreed on a common set of specifications and was ready to submit it to the government.
In the interim, both T-T and W-J engineers, anticipating sizeable NSA orders, were working to develop the technology for this new breed of radios.

                At the last moment, which my source called the "23 hour and 59th minute moment" Watkins-Johnson, to Ten-Tec's complete surprise and dismay, introduced one additional specification: the "radio of the future"
must have a 20,000 hour "mean time between failure" specification- a ridiculously stringent requirement which is roughly the same required for space electronics. This was a cagey move on W-J's part, because W-J, having supplied mil-spec radios for decades could meet the MTBF requirement, but poor Ten-Tec, with its background in the consumer electronics market, could not. So, in the end, Ten-Tec dropped out of the competition and W-J got the NSA orders. Ironically, lacking a competitor, W-J was then able to charge the NSA nearly twice the NSA's target price for HF-8711A

                But Ten-Tec then decided to fight back. Since they had already developed the technology during the year of collaboration with W-J, Ten-Tec quickly came out with RX-330, which has no front panel, but which is otherwise the "radio of the future" design, without the MTBF specification.
They offered this radio to the government at 1/3 the price of an HF-8711A, and to their delight the NSA and agencies from other countries snapped  up this new breed of "black box" receivers in droves. Evidently, users had become comfortable with computer-controlled receivers, and under procurement rules, it was permissible for agencies to purchase "COTS"
(Consumer-Off-The-Shelf) radios.

                With the success of the RX-330, Ten-Ten subsequently decided to bring the RX-340 to market. And so, the similarity in the front panels is no accident, but a result of a collaboration between the two companys, that ended with some corporate dirty tricks. The government-military market is still an important part of T-T's business.

73,

Jim Garland W8ZR

WA8DRZ:
Jim,

I can add that the RX330 series are indeed good little recievers.  We standardized on them for shore stations in the early days at Globe Wireless and probably have purchased nearly 500 to date.  Also, another agency that shares some of out sites uses the receivers - I can't name them, but they deal with airplanes instead of ships.

I have a pair in the shack and love them...

Craig
WA8DRZ

W2PFY:
Quote

I have a pair in the shack and love them

Please if you can post a picture of the front and back of the receiver.

Thanks Terry

k4kyv:
How much $$ is TT asking (non-government customers) for it?

I am glad to see dedicated receivers (not transceivers) on the market.

WA3VJB:
A couple of things don't add up in an otherwise heartwarming story of David vs. Goliath.

1.  Why would Watkins-Johnson work with TenTec in a joint-development project ?  Was it because they needed a consumer-grade company to contribute some cost-cutting ideas ?  Plausible, but not likely.

2.  How did W-J get to add a contract specification that greatly expanded the projected cost? The point of the NSA's study group was to cut the cost to a target level.  Anything that failed to do that should have been ruled out.

I've seen some "sole source" government contracts, with deliberate wording that effectively excludes rivals, but that doesn't seem to be the premise here.

Still, if the RX330 / 340 are the result of such hijinx, then so much the better.  I just wonder whether the TenTec executive was spinning a yarn on behalf of his company.

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