John, just to set the record straight on how Elecraft handles service, out-of-warranty calls to their support person are free. This person is not a bench technician but a knowledgeable amateur employee who can handle most call-solvable issues. If he gets stuck he will contact the technician/engineering team but he won't pass you off to them on the phone. Generally, he will respond via email. This method works very well and he knows most issues concerning Elecraft products. Elecraft's initial bench fee is $99 for the K3 and perhaps for other equipment as well. I don't really know as I have only had a K3 back to them. Their system seems to work quite well. I own an Orion I (565) and just sold my K3 so I know both sides.
From http://www.elecraft.com/repair.htm: Mike and John do not need to justify the increase in service prices to the community. It is what it is and Mike's decision alone. But it is reasonable for customers to compare the overall cost of ownership with competitors when making a decision on what radio to purchase. Part of the expense of Elecraft equipment is the built-in cost of "free" remote technical support and a lower base repair/alignment fee. Hopefully Ten Tec will be able to get to that point in the future. I know a lot of people bought the little 100 watt amp developed for the Argo to boost the power on their KX3 because Elecraft took a long time to get the KXPA100 on the market. I hope they can continue to be competitive with their product and service offerings in the future.
I was just trying to point out that like Elecraft, warranty repair is covered for the warranty period. AND Like Elecraft, for items out of warranty, the customer will be charged for the repair service. The amount is different for now because things are basically getting rebooted/restarted. Give it time. TEN-TEC realizes that it's long running tradition of allowing endless phone calls does nothing but create a backlog of items in service and costs the company a lot of $ due to loss revenue due to NOT finishing as many service items as it could and collecting payment for the work that would have been expended for finished service jobs, and STILL having to cover the overhead during times of "non-productive" service labor. So, TEN-TEC is trying to get the tech on the bench and off the phone, so, TEN-TEC is instituting a policy, unlike other manufacturers, where if the customer chooses to spend an extensive amount of time on the phone, he/she will get charged for it. The good thing is, this policy will be known, so if a customer wants to call in for a question on something, or has an issue that they are not sure if it is a hardware failure requiring service or not, they can still call and won't get charged when it is a normal standard run of the mill question that they know what they want to ask, know what they want to describe to the technician, and the technician will most undoubtedly know the answer to and can have the exchange of information between answering the call to hanging up take no more than 5-10-15 minutes max. Now, if that same customer ends up spending an hour on the phone, well, then they will get charged. There is NOTHING wrong with that policy. It is up to the customer, understand what it is they want to ask, relay that information to the technician, get an answer on how to resolve it by the customer, or have the tech ship a part and the customer only gets charged for part cost plus shipping, or send the unit in for repair. Period. Simple. It is all up to the customer. If they want to spend an hour, well, they know they will pay for it. Why is this so wrong? And, as I have said about 20 times already, give this policy time to go through it's paces, give TEN-TEC time to get cash flow from sales covering the majority of the overhead, etc. Things might change for the better. Realize that the continued ripping apart of this policy online does nothing but keep the TEN-TEC contributors from getting closer to having existing product in production and having new products delivered. So, as I have asked, I'll ask again, give it time, 73, KI4JPL John Henry
When you post on a privately owned web site, the Constitution does not apply. You are at the whims of the owner and his rules. The 1st Amendment protects you from the GOVERNMENT censoring you speech, NOT this web site. FYI. ..............Bob
There is a little more too it. Comparing Apples to Apples, Elecraft has not been around as long as TenTec. I do not believe they have any obsolete products. TenTec on the other hand is getting hour long telephone calls about something built in 1980 or before, which has not been built in who knows how long. Each time I sell a DX2400 I have called the customer and made a point of familiarizing him with the features, menu system, diagnostics, etc. and have gone through the complete set up and installation with him over the telephone. This usually included a lesson in binary math as the menus are digitally indicated by the LEDs on the display bar graph. This would take from one to two hours out of my day, but I was happy to do it and it is budgeted for in the price of the amplifier. It comes with unlimited support during the warranty period. It is also documented comprehensively in the manual. I can't tell you how many times people would call up after the warranty period and ask how to set the menus after they had previously been trained and had notes in the manual. I would ask "Didn't you write it in the manual?" The reply would be "Yeah, but it is easier to call you." I don't really mind those calls because they are infrequent because there are that many of them. Now imagine the number of calls from people where there are thousands and thousands of radios spanning almost a 50 year production run. Is Elecraft half that age or have a fraction of the different products? I can tell you that since it became known that I am running Ten Tec, despite having stated not to contact Dishtronix about Ten Tec service questions that I have not been able to do my job for nearly two weeks plus. Frankly it is overwhelming and frustrating. I'm sorry I can't answer questions about a dial string. The sheer volume of calls to the service department is overwhelming. We have to do SOMETHING to get the problem under control. If people think they have to pay for something, they MIGHT be inclined to do something like CHECK THEIR MANUAL FIRST and do some of their own homework. They might try troubleshooting a bit themselves. A prime example of this is the phone calls I get repeatedly of "Mike, the amp isn't working". Each time I say disconnect all the crap you have hooked up to it, connect ONE transceiver to it, ONE coax to it and ONE PTT line without all the other crap you have routed in the station. Turn it on and tell me if it makes power. Of course I wait on the telephone, and 99% of the time the reply is "It's working". Then we go on through checking your coaxes, using antennas as dummy loads, on and on and before you know it an hour of my day is gone. That is one less hour of time spent on getting a new radio design finished. If you one call a week you have lost 1/40th of your time and 2.5% of your pay for the week. Think about that - each call reduces your salary by 2.5% per week. How many of you would be happy to go to work if your pay was reduced by 75% from having ten such calls? Paul Clinton very rarely serviced any radios that I could see. It was a whole salary for him to talk on the telephone and answer emails. Could you personally afford to pay a years salary for producing nothing tangible? When Jack B owned Ten Tec he had the advantage of building the company up over 40 good years of revenue streams. Ten Tec employed 130 people in 40,000 sf building. Now there are ten people in a rented space. What was a 1/130th expense now becomes a 1/10th expense. It is not a sustainable model. If you want to call up and talk for an hour about a problem on your used 1980 radio you bought on ebay you have to pay. It is as simple as that. Ten Tec can not stay in business supporting your 40 year old radio for free. Our alternative is to refuse to support you period. When Elecraft turns 46 I'm sure whomever owns it after Eric and Wayne sell what is left of it the new owner will have the same situation. Think about it - Drake is gone, Collins is gone, really Ten Tec is the only one left standing from those old days. Even the big three YaComWoods didn't start on these shores until the mid 70s. Does Icom still service the IC-22H? Do they provide free telephone support for it? Do they even stock the diodes for programming the diode matrix to channelize the synthesizer? Are you complaining about their service rate or Flex's service rate which is published at $99/hour? I want to make one last thing clear - we have not said that you can not call Ten Tec and talk to someone. What we have said is if it escalates and you talk to a technician more than five minutes you will be charged. For those of you who are unaware this policy already exists at RKR for Alpha. I'm surprised it wasn't implemented already at Ten Tec. When I called up to talk to Brad a few weeks ago about some things, Pam ran the gamut of 20 questions shielding the technician until I told her who I was . You don't get to talk to the service techs or parts department at Yaesu as far as I know at least from when I tried about 10-15 years ago. I had FT100 problems out of the box which never were resolved. I got answering machines and endless hold until I just gave up, and that on a brand new radio. Where else does the president of the company come down to your forums and try to interact with you? You buy a rice box and you deal with the distributer and never with the factory. I'm starting to think Ten Tec may have to start selling through distributers and just let them handle the customers. I had to quit selling watt meters simply because I can not afford to talk to a person on the telephone for an hour about a $159 meter. One of those calls sucked away the profit for ten units. Friends, I'm really sorry, but this thread has gone on long enough. The service policy is what it is. John Henry and I will no longer respond to any comments on this subject. It is time to close this thread and move on. We will not correspond further on this subject. We appreciate your input and your concerns, but no one has come up with a better solution. If you have a constructive ideas we will read them and perhaps respond but we are not going to debate our policies. We are running the company and know what needs to be done, and we are doing it. We are very appreciative of your comments and concerns and have done our very best to try to address them and to be transparent with you. What you get from us is the truth, not the automatic "Everything is fantastic" you get from every other business even if it is already tanked. I hope you appreciate our honesty and remember us on your next radio purchase. 73 de N8WFF
I'd rather think the "rules" matter more as far as what happens in regard to repercussions than "whims." And I'd like to assume that this is the most overpowering rule. In this forum, the most useful "venting" has been from those who may have experience with Ten-Tec and not merely the voicing of opinions that echo what others may have said with little to back up their statements. Useful, perhaps, to see what those actual users have experienced and what they say can be added to the mix when decision time comes for future planning. But "opinions" from those who are not users of Ten-Tec or maybe never have even seen them in operation are nothing but opinions with no viable import. In fact, in most cases one listens to round-tables on the air and unless someone tells you what equipment they are using, it is very often unknown what brand rig they are using unless they are asked. As a system, for example, the way the mike input circuit/system is set up is more notable as to how a signal sounds on the air than anything else. This is disregarding the naturally "froggy" voices sometimes heard which can be overcome to large degree with judicious settings of the mike input circuitry. In fact, as those with commercial broadcast experience know, a "personality module/unit" is used by all good "talking heads" so they can keep their "radio voice" consistent when they go from station to station. In fact, some carried their personal module with them. Or, at least, this was the way it was in decades past. By the way, your QRZ Bio is very well done. I liked it very much.Wish I could look down at some clouds in absolute silence except for the whispering wind. (sigh) But all I've done is CAP with four-bangers (American Yankee and Caribbean). Took some day-long trips in PPY Catalinas in the Amazon, though. Never had it so good.
May I suggest, if you haven't thought of it, that you prepare a YouTube type video of the basics and perhaps of operation of the DX2400 and refer the callers to those videos. A "first question" to such callers could be, "Have you seen our user videos?" This would prepare the user/s to the idea that BEFORE they get into detailed wrinkles they may be experiencing, they should see the videos and this way eliminate some item missed by the customer when attempting to use the equipment. As an aside, though, some videos I've seen are good and others have to be interpreted on the fly. A video, or you may call it a Tutorial, showing how it works, how it tunes up, how it should show meter readings with various options, etc., etc., while talking the operation through would eliminate some telephone time, perhaps, and make the user confident that he/she is doing the right thing. If, on the other hand, the user says that he/she has seen the video, it may be time to take notes on an unusual or unique problem that might be rearing it's nasty head. There are some YouTube type talk-throughs that are very good and useful. Such a video could even be put on a DVD and provided with the equipment in a way that the question would be instead of the one above, "Did you watch the video provided with in the equipment package?" However, if done in the right way, giving the video to a prospective buyer could be the decision-maker for the sale, also. Seeing what the equipment has done and will do for the customer is almost as good as a demonstration at a big hamfest. As I said, it could be a decision-maker for the hesitant but prospective buyer. As an another aside, a Video Tutorial would also provide the {prospective] buyer with demonstrations on the air and this way demonstrate how good radio practice, ham radio-wise, is put into action. Proper use of callsigns and IDing and other refinements of ham radio could be introduced to hams and prospective buyers. If this is done correctly, it could be a video used by clubs in their ham radio classes and "coincidentally" serve to introduce the "aficionados" to not only ham radio and ham radio practices, but also introduce the same "newbies" to Ten-Tec. Not exactly an advertising ploy but a subtle way to get the name Ten-Tec back into common usage.
Same thing happens at MFJ. I called about a choke in the RF stage of a 40M QRP transceiver and it took me a good ten minutes to (finally) get to a tech who sent me the choke I needed. But the need for a call screener is necessary, in my opinion, and the best screeners will say, "Let me ask you a few questions so I will know best how to route your call." Still not the best way but an automatic "Push 3 if..." is another thing for callers to complain about. Some people think the only people in the world is him/her, the user, and the technician but this is because they live in a personal/private world of their own making. That world lives in their minds and their minds only, however, and they are reluctant to see it any other way. A good trouble-shooting section in an operator's manual is no doubt the best time-saver for both the user and the equipment maker's service department but the problem is the manual is too often discarded with the packing. Some hams think they know it all to such extent that nothing is beyond them. This is why downloadable manual/s are so necessary. This is also why some operator's manuals have an instruction in bold type at the end of the operator's section where it gives the service department numbers and just before the trouble-shooting section that says, in effect, "If radio/equipment is not working satisfactorily, see following trouble-shooting items BEFORE calling service department."
Mike, I've never bought a new HF radio - ever. Always had used units and never owned a TT radio. Having read your thoughtful and intelligent commentary, my first new HF purchase may well be a TT. Let the excellence of your work be your protest against the naysayers. 73, Jim K - KS9Q
FYI, Bob...I guess it's a good thing that I worded it the way I did then, huh...?!?! QUOTE: "I'm sorry...I was under the impression that self expression and individuality were traits and characteristics that certain aspects of the Constitution, and even the very essence of being all things "American", were about." UNQUOTE. Emphasis on: "...and even the very essence of being all things "American", were about." As for any assertions as to what protections the Constitution may or may not provide in that peer-to-peer situation, I don't recall having made any assertion in this forum in that regard. But thank-you for interjecting that bit of Constitutional trivia, Counsellor. Please just read the words I wrote...Not the words you THOUGHT I wrote. 73 Steve, K4YZ
KK5R, I've appreciated your posts, thoughts, inputs, criticisms, etc. It all helps to make a better TEN-TEC, which goes to make better products. etc. TEN-TEC does publish online manuals for most of the products. All of the current production products have the manuals available on the website (well, for now, at http://www.rkrdesignsllc.com/, eventually they will be on the tentec.com website. In time. Very thank full to RKR for letting that documentation remain for now. This includes user manuals, schematics where possible, etc. and a lot of other technical documentation, e.g. for certain specific features, or tech bulletins, etc. I do admit, the manuals do lack necessary information for a user to trouble shoot his electronics, but, that is something I will try to improve if I can. You can also look at the "obsolete" page and see the same, if not more information/documents, for a LOT of the units out of production, e.g. the Orion, etc. Two places to look for older documents. http://www.rkrdesignsllc.com/support/obsolete-product-documentation/ There are manuals for the 253, the 505, the ??? just look, you would be amazed at how many "free" manuals there are there. Look at: http://www.rkrdesignsllc.com/suppor...duct-documentation/ten-tec-obsolete-products/ There are manuals, firmware updates, etc. etc. for: TEN-TEC 516 Argonaut V TEN-TEC 538 Jupiter TEN-TEC 550 Pegasus TEN-TEC 565 Orion TEN-TEC 566 Orion II TEN-TEC 1254 100 kHz - 30 MHz Receiver TEN-TEC 20, 30, 40, 80 Meter QRP Transceiver Kit - Model 13XX TEN-TEC RX-320 / RX-320D DSP HF Receiver TEN-TEC RX-350D HF DSP Receiver TEN-TEC RX-366 Orion/Orion II Sub-receiver TEN-TEC RX-400 etc. LOADS of information. BTW, anyone ever seen an RX-400? That is a HECK of a receiver in a box, mostly sold commercially, but, fantastic product for SIGINT usage. (hint hint, anyone want to buy a dozen or so? that would sure put a heck of a boost into TT's cash flow, controlled via USB or Ethernet or Serial, and there is even an RCU400A that will control up to 7 RX400s via the ethernet, monitor them, set them up, etc. etc. Fantastic in a surveillance aircraft, in a shack in Alaska, etc.. ..... ok, I digress, out of salesman mode back to reality, lol) Also, notice, the line of 13xx transceiver kits, there was a 20, a 30, a 40, and an 80 meter version. So, ..... The older manuals were a lot better, in my opinion, for real hams. The current manuals are more like user guides, great information, but they can't be used to trouble shoot issues, which is something I think that real user manuals need. Anyway, thanks for the inputs, but I hope that you and others do see that there is a LOAD of information users can refer to regarding current or ancient 40 year old products online today. (granted, some are scanned copies of original documents, so, quality isn't 100%, but, the info is there) 73, KI4JPL John Henry
ok, a bit of info on the RX400...... from the brochure at the location I mentioned above. TEN-TEC has expanded its line of DSP based software defined receivers. Tuning from 100 kHz to 3 GHz, the 1 ms synthesizer lock time provides realistic scan rates of 100 channels/sec or faster. One outstanding benefit of the DSP architecture is more than 50 built-in IF filter bandwidths from 100 Hz to 300 kHz, most useable in any detection mode. Strong signal handling is assured with a typical in-band 3rd order intercept of -3 dBm. This thing rocks/kicks royal butt for search and find missions for SIGINT..... Just like the RX331/RX340, fantastic receivers for SIGINT.... Just sayin'..... 73, KI4JPL John Henry
You should combine two RX331s in a single box with a transmit section, wide range auto tuner, and put it up against the TS-990S and IC-7851. High end radio, big profit. Call it the Omni X to reflect the RX architecture, and because it sounds cooler than Omni III.
Whereas the RX331 and RX340 do have about the best sounding audio I have ever "heard", they suffer from being designed for a different purpose. Suffer meaning I don't know how well they would fare in the amateur market. They were geared towards EXTREMELY fast search type usages such as for SIGINT. An advantage is that they do support modes that some have asked for, ISB, SAM, etc. It's receiver performance numbers don't fare well on the receiver test reports. But, a few things could be "tweaked" with the master designers help (referring to the ultra intelligent CTO of TEN-TEC, hint hint, lol) to try to get the numbers that amateur buyers swear by, I'm sure he could do some magic and improve it past where it is today, but climb to the top? don't know, and everyone would yell if it didn't cross that peak, or hit in the top 5 at least. Drawback at the moment, 331 is 5khz - 30MHz, so 6m would have to be an option, for that matter, we could make 2m an option as well, only software and numbers, huh? lol.... assuming the DSP and other HW it would need to go through could handle frequencies above 30MHz to get to 6m. Would have to consider costs.... A single RX331 is 3200 bucks (was, not sure now, but will probably stay the same). Two would be 6400, ( I know, wouldn't need it's metal, but assume that whatever box we put it in would cost similar for the two together) Since the 331 is a "box" without a GUI / Display, would need to add a front panel control CPU boards and all peripherals for it may add $500-$1k to selling price With the right display controller / rig controller CPU it could have HDMI outputs, USB inputs/outputs, Ethernet, etc. Assume using an existing "box" and front panel, so assume no change there (maybe the Orion II....) Add the TX path, assume it adds another $1k. We are around 8400 selling price. Again, just me doing EXTREMELY quick rough swags. It could be less, maybe $7-$7400, but, somewhere in that ball park. That would put it about the same as the TS-990S, ASSUMING we could get the numbers that a lot of hams swear by close to the top of the revered list. Anyway, good thoughts, will keep that and other suggestions in the back of our minds, who knows what the future holds though, 73, KI4JPL John Henry
