Beldon cable going to Mexico

[flintstone mop]

hello
Before I retired we were building an upgraded digital microwave network for the company. Andrew Antenna moved their factory to Mexico and the huge order we placed for 6, 8, & 10 foot dishes took forever. They had to bring the wood used to crate these huge dishes from the USA to their factory in Mehico. Once the order arrived there were a couple of dishes bent.  We were lucky that there happened to be an extra dish ordered and after modfications to the system and microwave path studies we did not need it after all. The "wheels" were breathing down or necks, because the NEC digital microwave radios were sitting around for 2 years. Some tree huggers near Dave KD2K, Bull Run Mtn. prevented us from building a taller microwave tower. It was an amazing work-around we performed.
I know it's a long story............I'm going through a bad day from the Chemo sorry.
Fred

[k7yoo]

There are no easy answers. I DO know this : our bureaucracy is wiping out manufacturing. In the 60's the big push where I grew up (Seattle area) was to "get the establishment"--and they still are. Those same people are now bureaucrats, managers, and inspectors (aka gestapo) and they delight in gumming up the works. My folks just built a new home on a site near the beach and had to hire an official archeologist (native American of course) to supervise and look for bones while all excavation was being done. $2500 later this bum sauntered off to the next victim. The site was a documented former excavation fill--not a burial site. This is just one example of how we are being bled by the ethno/eco-nazis. They won't be happy untill we are asking for foreign aid from the EU.
Freedom disappears one bureaucrat at a time.
Skip

[Bill, KD0HG]

IIRC, the American economy did pretty well in the 50s and 60s, even with those tariffs in place. Obviously, today's 'level playing field' isn't so level after all, eh?

Imported goods should be taxed to what they'd cost if their off-shore manufacturers had paid wages similar to those paid in the purchasing countries.

THAT would make the playing field level. And it would put the onus back on manufacturing ideas, development and efficiency. All of those Chinese companies could give a spit about efficiency because they don't have to pay competitive wages. So their factories and infrastructure are wasteful pieces of sh!t. And a health and environmental disaster in the making. There's no OSHA there to make sure they put guards on equipment to keep worker's fingers attached. That saves 'em plenty of dough over companies there that are doing the right thing.
They don't truly have to compete. It's NOT a level playing field.

Phil, don't limit it to ham radio gear, can you tell me who manufactures *any* kind of consumer electronics in the USA any more? I can't think of a single one, from cell phones to TV, to radios. Dell is the last major American computer manufacturer since IBM sold out to Lenovo in China last year. That didn't last too long, did it?

I will say that the American auto manufacturers are screwed up. Outfits like Toyota and Honda pour all of their resources into just a few vehicles development.  OTOH, GM and Ford try to cover the entire market by shotgunning a bewildering variety of vehicles out of their factories, many of which are duplicated, like Chevy and GMC across the board to the other GM brands, Ford and Mercury, you got it.
They are *still* in the quantity over quality mindset in the car arena. And it shows.
They have sunk a lot of their resources into light trucks, and Ford and GM do make very good trucks as a consequence.

Ford's Taurus was a blockbuster hit 20 years ago because Ford poured all of their resources into R&D, engineering and manufacturing ideas for that one new product. Just like Toyota puts all of its effort on a few models like the Camry, and Honda puts all of their sweat in winners like the Accord.

That's what's wrong with the last remaining American car manufacturers, but they won't get it until it's too late.

It's called FOCUS, and the American car manufacturers still haven't gotten it.

<rant mode off>

[WA1GFZ]

Focus is on the quarterly bonus not the company. The board of crooks hire a guy and give him a sweet heart deal to make money at all cost. The only way to perform is to have the company turn into a sweat shop and delete R&D.
I know a company that just shut down its most successful operation to move off shore to a place where the employees rob their tools on Friday and want more on Monday.
The bean head who thunked up this smart move sold it as not needing engineering support and it saves money. He is out of a job now but so are 350 other hard working Americans who now have nothing...and don't pay taxes any more.

I amazed at how stupid this is and also by the people who think it is a good idea.
It seems we need to become third world and broke before we wake up.
We do send our smartest to Washington to become professional crooks.
WTF our credit card is going up 1T a year...a nice round conservative figure.

Then we pay these outsiders to screw us while we can't seem to afford anything but excuses for the tax payer.

but i aint the sharpest tool in da shed

[David, K3TUE]

I have a lot to say about a lot of points brought up so far, but I will spare you all of them save this one, which, IMNSHO, is a brief answer to most complaints about where this country is headed.

This country, run by this governent, is paid for by rich people and companies (people too, according to the US Supreme Court), and they are the ones who get the laws they want, so they can cultivate more power and make more money.  Everything from farm subsidies, to NAFTA, to government military contracts are in place to make the rich richer.

As far as where we are headed, if you have ever taken a trip south of the border to a place like Mexico City you would see where we are headed.  A country where there is an even greater disparity between rich and poor.  My wife lived with it for over 10 years and I have seen it for weeks at a time, and it ain't pretty, and it ain't sustainable.

I could say more, but if I do I am sure to offend, no matter who has said what I would repeat, someone would be offended.  Hell, I'm offended myself.

[w1guh]

"A microcosm of this malady occurred in amateur radio about 35 years ago. The Japanese, led by Yaesu, started dumping their crappy radios into the American marketplace. These radios were cheaper than the ones made by Collins, Drake, etc...and you got what you paid for, as many of them (e.g., the FTdx400 and FTdx560) were real pieces of s--t. But, one by one, the American manufacturers went out of business or stopped making amateur radio equipment. Save for Ten Tec, there are NO American-made radios on the amateur radio market, except for some made by a couple of small niche manufacturers such as Elecraft."


And...


"I will say that the American auto manufacturers are screwed up. Outfits like Toyota and Honda pour all of their resources into just a few vehicles development.  OTOH, GM and Ford try to cover the entire market by shotgunning a bewildering variety of vehicles out of their factories, many of which are duplicated, like Chevy and GMC across the board to the other GM brands, Ford and Mercury, you got it.
They are *still* in the quantity over quality mindset in the car arena. And it shows.
They have sunk a lot of their resources into light trucks, and Ford and GM do make very good trucks as a consequence."


Re: State of the are ham equipment, ca. 1980

I'd been out of the loop most of the 70's and in 1980 I got back into the hobby, and this time I could pretty get anything, money wasn't the object it had been.  I got major wood contemplating Collins or Drake.  I got the info about the KWM-380 and the TR-7, and also looked closely at the TS-180 and IC-701.  I gotta tell ya...Collins and Drake were complete victims (perpetrators?) of American Management Momentum.  I'm sure that the two of them made radios that were very good, but they were OLD FASHIONED and obselete.  The TR-7 was little more than a "Transistorized TR-4".  It offered nothing more than that.  The KWM-380 did embrace some tecnhology, but it was heavy and big and wasn't mobile capable.  Contrast this with what Kenwood and Icom were doing.  They didn't say, "How can we make a transitorized radio?"  They asked, "How can we exploit state of the art technology to make really fine stuff?"  They understood the technology and weren't afraid to think out of the box.

A parenthetical comment here.  I'm sure there's someone who's going to say, 'Yea, but the ColDrake had better this and that and the other thing.  Maybe they did.  But few would notice that in everyday service.

That's why I bought the Icom.  I was bitterly disappointed by what I found on the U.S. side.  Collins and Drake didn't even try to compete.

Just exactly like the auto industry.  They kept griping about "level playing fields" and "closed societies" when Toyota and Honda, et al quietly learned how to build fine, reliable vehicles that lasted while GM and Fore P&M'ed.

Level playing field?  Does anyone here entertain the idea that Toyota found a level playing field when they started selling cars in America?  Give me a break.  GMl and Ford ruled.

There is one more factor here...after kicking Japan's A@# is WW II, we gave them mucho financial aid to rebuild their industry.  And, since they started from scratch, they built very modern plants.  We creaked along on obselete manufacturing facilities. 

We've totally lost our edge.  We make nothing.  American industry just simply gave up in the 70's.  The people running things blamed everything except the real problem.  That would have been too expensive to fix, so they trashed the workforces, bad-mouthed the Japanese, and when Ronnie came along they celebrated that they were rich.  Meanwhile they spread LOTS and LOTS of propaganda about how we just can't do it anymore.

BTW...isn't this what the AM Inquirer is for?

Paul

[Pete, WA2CWA]

BTW...isn't this what the AM Inquirer is for?

In my opinion, I think we've reach a point where the thread should end or continue over on the AM Inquirer. We made our points, some more than once, and we're starting to drift more into the political side of things. Don't see any reason to continue to beat the political drums, bad government policies, crooked CEO's, etc. etc. here on the AM QSO Section of the Board.

Thanks

[Bill, KD0HG]

Thanks for keeping me honest, Pete ;-)

[w1guh]

While I love being quoted, courtesy sez that it's only proper to ask permission before quoted text is modified.

73,

Paul
W1GUH

BTW...isn't this what the AM Inquirer is for?

In my opinion, I think we've reach a point where the thread should end or continue over on the AM Inquirer. We made our points, some more than once, and we're starting to drift more into the political side of things. Don't see any reason to continue to beat the political drums, bad government policies, crooked CEO's, etc. etc. here on the AM QSO Section of the Board.

Thanks

[KB2WIG]

My Chineese made American computer has color organs, light shows and even a scope type display when it plays music......   klc

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

Just a few additonal points to add to  Phil's remarks on the KWM-380:

It was indeed set up to run either 115VAC or 12VDC. No, it wasn't as lightweight or small as a ricebox at the time, but it was a whole lot more radio. Also, compare apples to apples here. Look a bit further down the road to the first big 'super rigs' like the TS-940 and others. Newer technology, sure, but it isn't difficult to trace the lineage back to the KWM-380, the very first of the line. Yes, it had its issues like phase noise and a number of bugs that cropped up as is typical with any new technology. But the KWM-380 was cutting edge at the time and offered far more than any other rig before or for a long time afterwards.

So it's really no different than comparing the earlier Drake and Collins rigs with the FTdx low end rigs: the real issue was/is a matter of price, not features or quality. Granted, Rockwell had a much different idea of what they were willing to sell them for compared to Art's longtime policy of selling ham gear cheap or at a loss to entice engineers who were hams to recommend their quality and service for the business end. Collins was never cheap, but their gear was always at the top and they were always a leading edge company (which is what ended up being Art's undoing).

Drake, Clegg, Hammarlund, Gonest, many US manufacturers made better gear. But as someone (Bill I think) pointed out, the cost of doing business for American companies is much higher than a China or most any other nation. You can't blame all of it on the CEOs when we have crippling taxes, costly unions, and a much higher standard of living for our workers. Combine this with environmental requirements (some good, some not so good) and a perceived need for this country to help everyone else regardless of how many times they spit in our face, and it doesn't bode well for us.

BTW, Sony did the same thing with TVs, Honda did with motorcycles, and Subaru did with cars, more recently Hyundai. Start with a cheap piece of crap and let the cheap Americans build your company up. Look at where those companies are today. They're not stupid.

[W9GT]

Combine this with environmental requirements (some good, some not so good)...

And now we have to put up with that RoHS (Regulation of Hazardous Substances) crap that is being forced down our throats by the Euroweenies and EUnuchs in Brussels. I had to order some parts for a transmitter at work and, thanks to RoHS and its requirements for lead-free (that's lead as in Pb, not lead as in a piece of wire) components, I had to buy a substitute that is more expensive.

But Phil, you know we must just accept the fact that the crazies are running the asylum!

Environmentalist extremism is taking over every aspect of our lives.  Again, according to these self-anointed guardians of the universe, we must cast aside any requirement for individual responsiblity and leave everything to the all-knowing government to protect us from ourselves.  Common sense is simply not needed when the decisions are made to reflect the mental capacity of the lowest common denominator.

73,  Jack, W9GT

[Tom WA3KLR]

Silver wire is even more sonically pure than oxygen-free copper wire. 
I don't know why the audiophools haven't been taking advantage of this.

[w1guh]

We might be talking apples and oranges.

I got major wood contemplating Collins or Drake.  I got the info about the KWM-380 and the TR-7, and also looked closely at the TS-180 and IC-701.  I gotta tell ya...Collins and Drake were complete victims (perpetrators?) of American Management Momentum.  I'm sure that the two of them made radios that were very good, but they were OLD FASHIONED and obselete.  The TR-7 was little more than a "Transistorized TR-4".  It offered nothing more than that.  The KWM-380 did embrace some tecnhology, but it was heavy and big and wasn't mobile capable.  Contrast this with what Kenwood and Icom were doing.

There is absolutely nothing sacred about "state of the art". If I buy a piece of equipment, I want RELIABILITY and don't give a rat's butt about "state of the art". The Japanese crap fails miserably on several counts:

1. The construction is flimsy, with membrane switches, switch actuators that are plastic buttons held to a sheet by a fragile tongue of plastic. In fact, just about everything in those radios is plastic! That may be OK if I am spending $20 for an AM/FM portable radio that I can take to the beach. But I certainly won't spend hundreds or thousands of dollars for such junk!

2. The Japanese are notorious for yanking parts and technical support for their radio equipment after a couple of years. They also love to use proprietary semiconductors. Enjoy your ricebox...but if the microprocessor goes bad or some other proprietary, house-numbered chip lets out the "magic smoke"...congratulations! You have just spent $3K or so on a doorstop! After all, Tokyo Rose wants you to support her economy by buying a brand new ricebox, complete with the latest garish displays.

3. A most annoying feature of many riceboxes is the Japanese obsession with menus. I just want something that will allow me to communicate from Point A to Point B...period! I don't want the aggravation of having to navigate menu after menu to put a signal on the air. Menus belong in restaurants...not radios!

4. Getting back to the older Japanese gear, such as the Yaesu FTdx400 and FTdx560, our "friends" in the Land of the Rising Sun cut a lot of corners...witness the use of TV sweep tubes (a sin also committed by Drake in some models and by Swan in all models) as RF final amplifiers and PC boards (particularly in the FTdx400) from which the foil would peel off the substrate after a few years, causing intermittents.

The early Drake TR-7s were dogs...but Drake soon fixed the problems and a lot of those rigs are still on the air. You can still get parts for them! Early runs of the KWM-380 also had problems, but Rockwell/Collins quickly fixed them. The KWM-380 was withdrawn from the amateur market because Rockwell/Collins could not compete with the Japanese on price. The Collins KWM-380 lives on as the HF-380, a general coverage transceiver used by the military and by commercial stations. It is horribly expensive, but I would take it over anything from Japan anyday if I could afford one. Since I cannot presently afford an HF-380, I prefer to keep my 50-year-old American-made gear running.

As you can see, a kind of Gresham's Law seems to work here. The bad, cheesy Japanese gear has squeezed the better American-made products out of the marketplace. I do see an irony in the large numbers of Japanese hams who are buying up older Collins gear. Dayton is full of them every year.

Meanwhile, if you like all the pretty lights and gaudy displays on Tokyo Rose's latest creations, just get yourself a good, solid, reliable, older American rig and string some Christmas lights on it. If you can find or build a "color organ" (once the rage in home audio), you can plug your Christmas lights into it and drive the thing with the audio that you feed into your transmitter or your receiver audio.

[KB2WIG]

Silver wire is even more sonically pure than oxygen-free copper wire. 
I don't know why the audiophools haven't been taking advantage of this.

It turnes black, thats why they dont use it....    klc

[k4kyv]

4. Getting back to the older Japanese gear, such as the Yaesu FTdx400 and FTdx560, our "friends" in the Land of the Rising Sun cut a lot of corners...witness the use of TV sweep tubes (a sin also committed by Drake in some models and by Swan in all models) as RF final amplifiers and PC boards (particularly in the FTdx400) from which the foil would peel off the substrate after a few years, causing intermittents.

Those things really were pieces of crap.  I have worked on a few of them.  So is the Tempo One, a rebranded Yaesu sold in USA (I believe the Japanese version was the Yaesu FT-200) - I used to call it the "piss-po' one."

The biggest problem with that junk was mixing cheap bakelite circuit boards with vacuum tubes.  Most of the consumer electronic crap of the era used the same construction.  After a couple of years, the expansion and contraction from the heat forms microscopic breaks in the circuit board, and the equipment develops hisses and pops, and finally intermittent failure.  I have tried to repair some of that crap and finally gave up in disgust and told the owner that the best place for it was the dump.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Those things really were pieces of crap.  I have worked on a few of them.  So is the Tempo One, a rebranded Yaesu sold in USA (I believe the Japanese version was the Yaesu FT-200) - I used to call it the "piss-po' one."

The biggest problem with that junk was mixing cheap bakelite circuit boards with vacuum tubes.  Most of the consumer electronic crap of the era used the same construction.  After a couple of years, the expansion and contraction from the heat forms microscopic breaks in the circuit board, and the equipment develops hisses and pops, and finally intermittent failure.  I have tried to repair some of that crap and finally gave up in disgust and told the owner that the best place for it was the dump.

I thought the early PC boards, including lots of U. S. made stuff,  were made with phenol fiber material which had pressed paper as part of its mixture. Easy to break, easy to burn, absorbed moisture, expanded, contracted, warped, etc.