"Radio Shack" predicted to disappear in the next year.

Nice hockey reference

 

Radio Shack

radio slack forgot the ones that supported them!!!

 

Radio Shack on Washington St.

I must be getting old. I have only fond memories of the original Radio Shack on Washington St. in Boston. They carried everything in the amateur radio line. I purchased my first real serious transmitter from them, A Harvey Wells TBS50D.

ex W1ZAN
K6PWP

 

Well, Vetco is still around in Bellevue although the bird is gone.
Then there's ABC Communications in Shoreline I think it is.
I remember working for Radio Shack in the early 80's.
I can honestly say that I don't recognize Radio Shack anymore.
I've walked into a Radio Shack with a cellphone in my hand, a pager and
ham radio on my belt with a microphone going up to the pocket and STILL
was asked if I wanted to buy a cellphone. TOTALLY clueless.
I'd rather order from HRO or other outlets where the people at least know
what you're talking about.

--KD7YVV, Ocean Shores, WA

 

Sheesh, that was a YOUNG bird too, wasn't it? IIRC, liked to have his neck scratched (I was up there in 2004).

Cortland
KA5S

 

Headed down the Olson Electronics path

RS is going to join Olson Electronics and Heathkit in their passing. I suspect the same problems existed with all three: poor management, hiring inexperienced customer service reps, and pandering to the fad-crazed general public. As if there aren't enough cell phone distributors out there, RS had to go and jump on the bandwagon. R.I.P. RS

 

I am sure surface mount technology had something to do with the loss of small electronic parts in the stores!

 

Hmmmm...

Please tell me your middle name is not Radio!

(look up wc3a)

 

I guess my free battery of the month club is over

 

Radio shack- the old days

Radio Shack was one of the originals, I worked there in 2005, I was hired to be there for my Technicial Knowledge, and didnt have much within the area of Sales ability, the salespeople are paid minimum wage plus commissions, and you had to sell past a dollar amount to make any good commissions, all the sales people fought for any sales, it was a heavy compitition, It was fun to help direct people coming in for the proper sales as they needed, unfortunitly, most of the sales were Cell phones(verizon) until radio shack lost the contract with them. If Radio shack came back, I wonder if Heathkit would stand a chance....will miss the old days with them both....73's de Mark w6mrk

 

Unfortunately, it wasn't the ham community that supported them! Just look at the mental midgets in the ham community that think the best way to show off how smart they were was to go into RS and harrass the salepeople. Granted, the salespeople didn't know that much as a whole, but they didn't have to. They just had to be able to find things FOR you.

By the mid 70's, RS people HATED hams as a group. Oh, there were a lot of hams in Tandy. In fact, a number of departments within Tandy actually considered studying for and getting a ham license an approved activity and you'd get paid time to do it. But as a company, mentioning ham products was hard sell, because of the idiot hams. Store managers more than any other group used to tell horror stories of the ham idiots and what they'd do in the stores.

I personsonally witnessed a ham come into a store and badger another customer looking at a scanner. Then pulled out his 2M HT and called the store on the autopatch. The other customer at that point was very interested, but when both the store employee and the customer asked about it, the ham idiot just smirked and said 'Wouldn't you like to know!' and walked out. Lid!

I had one customer pull the 'you'll never know' my frequency stunt while I there, so I reached over and set the brand new (prototype, not cleared QA (long story!)) Pro-2001 scanner in search, and it found it in minutes. The scanner actually went out of the store that night, even though it wasn't supposed to be sold. Like I said, long story... (There's other stories too, like the customer in Lancaster PA who got a Model 16 by accident. MONTHS before it was announced! I personally had to handle that, as customer service didn't even know the Model 16 was coming yet!)

I've heard worse. When I was at Tandy, if I traveled around the country, I would NEVER let on to store people that I was a ham, unless they knew me already.

And outside the stores arena there was even more friction to hams. Granted, a lot was caused by Wayne Green, but you can't blame him for it all, or even the majority.

I spent 9 years with Tandy, and yes, I could tell you 'idiot stories' from the inside of the company, but I can also tell you much more idiot stories of the customers. And the WORST by far were the hams that came into stores trying to be 'brain proud' and show off the little pieces of knowledge they had picked up.

There were a lot of things that Tandy COULD have come out with, and it was a real shame that the ham attitude killed the products. Ron Light, before he died, had some INCREDIBLE RTTY software for the TRS-80s. I had a copy he gave me for my Model II. John P (I won't put up his last name here) had a lot of ham stuff for the Coco, as that was his baby at one point. He pretty much designed the SALT chip with Motorola, and went on to be a chip designer at AMD. Tom King designed a real simple TDR to test cables. At least that got to be a product that customers could order from National Parts after he wrote an article for one of the ham magazines about it. 'Officially' National Parts stocked it for computer centers to test ArcNet cables.

If anyone in the ham community expected any kind of loyalty down from RS, they would be sorely disappointed, because the only loyalty down was from inidividual store managers or salepeople that had relationships in the ham community. To be fair, corporate tried, due to a number of hams at the top level within the company. But I can still remember the groans from most of the store managers when a ham product would be announced at meetings. There would be a few excited people, but overall, they just didn't want the hassles. It's amazing RS sold as much ham equipment as they did.

And think about this... How many hams know that RS not only sold some 2M HTs (the HTX=200) but also a 440 version. And a dual-band HT. OK, a fair number. But how many realized they also sold things like a dual-band mobile for a short time? (I think it was the Alinco DR-600, but that was after I quit, so I'm not sure.) Or that they sold a TNC? Of HF equipment?

 

This was a list released by Wall street "analysts", their still trying to get a prediction right!

 

Still some decency left there

I found their salespeople quite helpful when my wife was setting up a wireless phone system in her office and we had equipment questions. Also, the battery just died on my car's remote keyer. The dealer wanted $50 to fix it. I popped the system and found a rather unusual battery in it. RS had one on the spot for $5. Too bad if the stores go that sort of occasional helpfulness will disappear too.

 

Unfortunately the hobby is dying, no not dead, but it's decline is becoming more and more prominent each year. If you've been on the airwaves for the last 20+ years you have seen a major decline in things. It's not my imagination, it's the truth. What was once a popular thing has become pretty much dead in my area.
A lot amateur radio shops have had to downsize their inventory or just plain out go out of business. (I live about 25 minutes from AES in Cleveland, they've had to cutback on the store size to stay a float...ask anyone in that store and they'll tell you the same thing.)

Hamfests, once popular too have become scarce or to be blatant, pretty much dead all over the country.

So as much as I would like to agree with your comment, I can't. First hand experience ya know. And while some may agree with me, some will not and that's fine, but if you've actually been involved with the radio for 20 years, you can't actually sit there in your seat and honestly tell me you haven't seen a decline in amateur radio and the alike, then you're probably not from this planet. I'm probably betting that some of you lost some of your buddies to the computer generation too..Well, that's another story in itself.

 

Who is left as a "parts" source?

I could see this coming YEARS ago! For many a year, one could alawys go to the nearest "Rat Shack' and get some part you needed without having to order it from Newark or Allied Radio or travel a long distance to get it. I worked on seagoing ship electronics gear for years while working for Marconi Marine and Mackay Radio, and there was times you didn't have a small part with you you needed to do a repair job! No need nowadays as there aren't too many "radio enthusiasts" who built or repaired gear made from "discrete components" anymore. Amateur radio isn't as "technical" as it used to be nowadays and commercial gear now is either thrown away when it fails or whole "modules" are replaced. Getting down to the "parts" level is rather rare these days in the newer gear.


I feel VERY old when I see some of the newer stuff you have to be a "watchmaker" to repair.......IF you can get the parts to do the job!

I probably have enough "old components" to start up a business selling them if need be.

73,

Sandy W5TVW