Well, sure, but what's there does nothing to make me feel comfortable buying one of their radios. You say, "they have radios in stock now". My impression was that those are the same radios that have been in stock since they closed their doors. According to Mike they haven't even ordered parts to begin new production, pending receipt of a sufficient number of new orders. If they don't have the parts to produce radios, why should one think they are equipped to handle any potential repairs? I don't know. It's great that Mike has the passion and interest to try and revive the brand of what was apparently one of the better quality radios on the market, but I'm just not getting the impression that it's going to work. It will be a shame if that's the case.
Folks, George (KJ6VU) chats with Ten-Tec in our Day 2 show. Here is the link to our site page for the episode: http://hamradio360.com/index.php/2016/05/22/hamvention-day-2-whirlwind-weekend/ a direct link to the episode is here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/amateurradio15/day2final.mp3 I hope this helps to answer your questions....it sounds-almost promising 73 K4CDN
This was posted by Mike to the TenTec contesting group a couple of weeks ago: Greetings Friends and Fellow Ten Tec Enthusiasts, I wanted to update you on what is happening in Sevierville. The Smokey Mountains are literally fogged in with smoke in some places as Tennessee has many wild fires burning. I was there two weeks ago and have never experienced anything like it. Driving down Jellico Mountain on I75 it became literally IFR conditions with near zero visibility from the smoke. As some of you know Ten Tec has been occupying office condominium space behind the site of the former factory where now a Wal-Mart Express is sitting. This site is not appropriate for our needs. Starting last week, we are moving out of this location into a more industrial friendly space. Unfortunately this location is not zoned for commercial walk in traffic, so the days of someone showing up at the factory door unfortunately have come to an end. After an entire year of searching for any possible opportunity to move, this is all we have been able to come up with. Commercial real estate is completely out of control in Sevierville county because of the tourist industry, and unless we have about a half million dollars to invest in the factory location you can just forget about it. Ten Tec is "too small" to receive any incentive, tax breaks or help from the local so called "Economic Development" office. My opinion is that the State and local government of Tennessee is about as economically unfriendly to a small business or start up business as is possible. For example, in other counties in TN the standard is to create 10 new jobs to get any incentive. Sevier County arbitrarily requires 25 jobs. By my calculations, 25 jobs would be around a million dollar pay roll if the jobs averaged 15 dollars an hour to the employee with a 25% more overhead to the employer. Any business having that kind of payroll better have about 10 million in gross receipts which would put it at DOUBLE the IRS definition of a small business and QUADRUPLE the IRS definition of a micro business, so it is obvious that the economic development offices do not have any mandate whatsoever to support or help ANY small business reason the scale of an individual person's finances. The fact that Ten Tec must have contributed millions of tax dollars to the local economy over the last 50 years means nothing. In many states, these economic development offices are partially funded by the local Chamber of Commerce. It is my opinion these offices function as intelligence gathering units to forewarn their members of any possible competitor entering their area. If small business is truly the economic growth engine of the United States it is apparent to me why we have growth problems if we depend on these organizations to help us as individuals. It seems ironic that the company named TEN TEC for Tennessee Technologies can't get any assistance at all in Tennessee considering the state's advertising of their "Tennessee Technology Initiative". If you are wondering why I wrote all this above it is to head off the endless string of expert recommendation that I contact TVA and the local economic development. I've done it and nobody is going to help Ten Tec in the State of Tennessee. To get back on track, I stated above we are moving the remainder of this month. You all know what that means. Service will be slow this month. Robert decided not to have you send in radios this month so we wouldn't have to move them. There is no cause for alarm or speculation. Service will continue just as soon as we are moved. I hear and read all kinds of gossip and complaints and this and that about our service, and none of it even close to accurate. We have serviced hundreds of radios this year and have a bunch of happy customers. You will see in the reflector some guy complaining or saying he is worried and then five people saying everything was fine. I'm so sick of it. Really it is so frustrating, especially when some of you call or write me up in Ohio about your twenty year old radio. I can't help you. I'm not in Tennessee. The people there run things and do their job essentially under Boyd's supervision. I don't want to sound condescending or aloof or unreasonable or unfriendly but please see this from my perspective. There are thousands of you and one of me. I am responsible to run this company and pay the people who work here whose families depend on me. I am an electrical engineer and my time needs to be spent getting the new products developed and out the door, not with a dial string for your old thing that I neither sold you or received any benefit of selling to you. Can you directly call the president of Icom? Does Eric answer the telephone when you call Elecraft? It is just not possible for me to answer every email and every telephone call about service issues. If you call me at Dishtronix and leave a message asking me to call you about your Ten Tec I'm not returning your call. If I answer I'm going to tell you we have put up the procedure that you email service@.... Yes, I have a telephone at Ten Tec and no, you can't have it. We are short staffed because we do not have sales volume at this time to support a large overhead. This way, Robert can go through all of the email and respond at one time in the morning, then spend the rest of the day shipping radios and parts orders without being interrupted. He is there three days a week, so you don't get answers on Monday or Friday. Sure, I know some of you don't like it. There is no need to tell me about it. I don't like it either, but until we start having a lot more cash flow that is the way it is going to have to be. For those that complain about how long it is taking, please understand this is a million dollar endeavor and money like that just doesn't grow on trees, at least for me. Of course any of you wealthy gentlemen looking for a good cause to donate some money to - I would love to have the cash on hand to turn things around tomorrow. Until then I'll be working 16 hours a day seven days a week with no days off and scrimp and save and spend carefully and build up slowly just like every other hard working guy has to do. What I am going to try to do next is set up sort of an email hotline for critical cases with Bob if he will do it. I just thought of this and have to talk to him about this. OK, enough about that. Let's get on to some better stuff. Many of you know that under RFC and RKR Ten Tec quit doing their PCB assembly in house. Those of you who have known me over the decades at Dishtronix know my shop suffered heating issues that made it tough for the machinery to run in the end of January to February arctic blasts. Well, I have a new and very nice double insulated, heated and cooled free span metal building where I've moved my PCB assembly operation and this is something I'm very excited about. The building has a metal skin totally covering the inside with good overhead fluorescent lighting and conduit encased electrical outlets every 12 feet around the perimeter. I have retired the older Contact Systems placement machines in favor of newer MYDATA (Micronics Sweden) placement machines. I installed the first MY9 machine this last June and have been using it to build boards for the RX340 commercial orders we have been fulfilling. Ten Tec did have a MY9 when they were building boards in house. The MYDATA machines are the choice for high mix medium volume production, especially when equipped with the Agilis quick change feeder system. Feeders usually cost more than the machines in this business, and I've been growing my collection all year. I am about a third of the way to having the collection of feeders I would like to have. Earlier this month I got lucky and was able to purchase the bar code software which will allow me to load and unload components from the machine by just scanning with the barcode reader, and it is done off line. It will help with inventory control and component management which is a real nightmare considering Ten Tec has over 7000 different line items. TheMY9 machine has a capability to hold up to 96 different components and has a single mounting head. As I write this, an air ride big rig is getting closer and closer to Ohio, hauling a MY19 machine in from San Francisco which can hold an additional 160 different components (total 256 8 mm tapes) and has 8 mounting heads! Hopefully this machine will be brought online successfully and not be damaged or in bad shape as I've bought it sight unseen. I've also moved the 8 zone, lead free capable, pin chain conveyor equipped Electrovert Bravo 8105 oven to the new building last weekend. This gives us the capability to process double sided surface mount and the ability to reliably process BGA chips. I've also purchased this summer but not yet installed an X ray machine to do 100% inspection of the BGA reflow soldering process. With the existing equipment (stencil printers, board washers, etc.) this will give us what I believe is the most well equipped and modern PCB manufacturing of any amateur radio manufacturer in North America. I believe the other guys outsource their board assembly. It may be the smart thing to do, but I personally prefer to buy and house my own components in house and to have total control over my assembly process. I find it requires more time to outsource and get constant bids for things like this than to just own the equipment and do it myself. I think you get a better product at less cost. Of course the best reason in my opinion for doing it all in house is I can do as small of a production run as I want, IF I am willing to spend the time to set up and do it. Hence the decision for the quick change capability of the MYDATA system. So, all in all what this means is the Phoenix is rising. I am rebuilding Ten Tec and preparing to do some serious manufacturing, which brings me to my next point. Most of you know we have been bogged down and overwhelmed with the commercial side of our business this last year since I officially assumed the helm in January. With trying to replenish the hard to get / long lead time / last time buy / obsolete parts, rebuild the PCB assembly operations, moving, and so on we just haven't had the horsepower to build any amateur transceivers. Well, the good news is we have caught up on our commercial contracts. Be glad we did this. You know all the stuff I wrote about above? The commercial contracts paid for that. Without this TEN TEC would not exist right now. We are at a very important cross roads right now. What do we do next? Some of you know we are developing new products. Those are still off on the horizon. What I need to know is how many of you would purchase Eagles if they were available? I'd like to do a run of 100 of them next. It is a great radio. I like mine every bit as well as my Orion II. The DSP function is superb. We have to talk a little bit about price. When the Eagle was launched it was a $2100 radio with no accessories. You all know the story of the blow out sales and the liquidation as the previous owners sold everything that wasn't nailed down on their way out. Some of you got fully loaded radios for $1299 or whatever. You know they didn't even cover their assembly cost on that, right? Some of you got real bargains. Of course only the last 35 radios or something were sold at that price but you get the point. You will never see a price like that again. If I have to sell an Eagle at that I will close and lock the doors and be done with it. A strip model needs to sell at 1699 at least. The more you are willing to pay for a radio the faster the new radios can come out. We want to build radios and sell them so we can keep the production team in place so we can meet the demand when the new radios come out. Everything we do tomorrow depends on how much you support us today. I'm certain some of you have heard that I and two partners acquired Alpha and that I've been officially at the Helm since August. It is a separate company from Dishtronix / TEN TEC. Of course I will be building the circuit boards for those products as well. I'm after something business people call economy of scale, essentially having enough product flow through the doors to totally occupy the machines and infrastructure. I'll be making a post on that reflector as well to update those customers also. By the way, we do have RX340s available to build on short notice now. Let me close by wishing you all a Happy and Safe Thanksgiving holiday, one of my favorites and of course the reason I see my dentist in November for my pre-feast tune up. The Sevierville team and I appreciate your support for TenTec, where we believe we are once again Making America Great - One Radio at a Time. VY73 DE MIKE N8WFF
You know, instead of bellyaching about Sevier County's substandard commercial space and "business incentives", why not move? You have Blount, Knox, Jefferson, Cocke, and Hamblen counties adjacent and within easy commute distance, if that is even a factor. Surely one of them has a suitable building for rent plus the ample corporate welfare that you seek.
I don't want to sound cruel but I tend to agree with Steve. I come from that area and maybe Sevierville is not the best option. If I were trying to make a go with a business in that area, I would make contacts with some of the other counties. Then make the trip down there to work out a better deal for Ten Tec. If Sevier County feels no loyalty for Ten Tec, then Ten Tec should feel no need to continue business in that county. As the old saying goes, "It's nothing personal, just a business decision."
There's a lot of machining & manufacturing to the W. on the Plateau - Putnam, Smith, White counties...I'm sure one of those counties would be more receptive than Sevier.
Sevier County is fueled by the tourist industry, so, the local business council tends to make decisions based on how will it help the tourist industry the best, especially since this group or family of this group or someone they know own most of the hotels/restaurants/etc in the area. Hence the old saying in the area when other "non tourist" industries try to start up in the area.... "Then who will make my beds?"...... So unfortunately Mike has run into the same roadblock. Yes, he could move to other counties in the area, but, if he does, he has to consider which employees can commute to the new location and which one's can't. The employees are spread across the county, so, go to Blount county, you lose the ultra key employees who live in East Sevier/Jefferson county. You go to Jefferson or Cocke county, you lose others of equal value. You lose these people, you lose the keys that made TEN-TEC products so good, the audio quality, innovative hardware, etc. Remember, one of his main goals of purchasing the company was to try to keep the employees (as many as he could) employed for as long as he could to support their families. In the meantime, he has found a work around for now that might work. But, it ain't pretty, and it ain't something that provides for things that TEN-TEC had in the past, accessibility, land for a hamfest, etc. But, for now, it works. Yes, he can move outside of the area, somewhere else in TN, or even out of TN, well, then why not just pull it back up to where he lives? or to where he can get better financial help from the local governments, e.g. why not go up to OH where he lives? or go somewhere else.... Then, he has lost all of his past TEN-TEC employees. I'm sure he will work something out, let's just let him figure out what to do and wish him the best. 73, KI4JPL John Henry
Wow, I just realized it, this thread started with the January 4, 2016 announcement, and it is still running. I wonder what the future will bring, wish 'em luck, 73, KI4JPL John Henry
This transceiver I collected myself. This is an example of his work and reception, and transmission. A tube transceiver. Thank you.
