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Re: MFJ to go out of business
On 2024-04-26 15:10, Leland L. Bahr wrote:
Yes shrinking. Halve the new people with licenses are not into ham*** I have to concur. Honestly, I'm surprised it still exists at all. I just don't hear much happening on the bands, except for contests. I miss the 70's. The novice bands were solid CW from one end to the other. You got to know the folks with the same crystal. I felt it was a mistake for the FCC to authorize 250W and VFO's for novices. What a present for the Japanese rig manufacturers! It was possible for a neophyte to put together a 75W rockbound transmitter from a magazine article. Not easy, but possible. Back then, junk TV sets with power transformers were common. A 250W VFO rig - totally another story. But maybe the FCC was not leading the way. Maybe they were just reacting to a less technical public. As a nerdy kid in a tough urban neighborhood, Ham Radio was my social life. When I got the General, I used to spend entire nights in the summer yakking on 40M SSB. And you could actually talk to people in foreign countries. Nowadays, that's ho-hum thanks to the Internet. - Jerry, KF6VB |
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Re: MFJ to go out of business
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýYes shrinking.? Halve the new people with licenses are not into
ham radio and don't even own a radio.? I asked one guy, what was
his call.? He had to get the license out of his wallet in order to
tell me.? Yes, real ham radio is shrinking. Lee, w0vt On 4/26/2024 3:44 PM, DavidC KD4E
wrote:
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Re: MFJ to go out of business
¡°Preppers¡± and new licensees aren¡¯t using traditional products.? I stand by my comments.? Steve Wedge, W1ES/4 Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. Sent from for iOS On Fri, Apr 26, 2024 at 16:44, DavidC KD4E <qrv@...> wrote:
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Re: MFJ to go out of business
Robert K9TWC
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýGreat point. Let¡¯s buy China because it¡¯s cheaper than our made products. A choice. One we¡¯ve all made but to what extent does it indirectly or directly affect our lives. Every choice we make matters. To not make a choice is a choice. Regardless of which side of the fence we are on only pits us to blame each other instead of our original choices of the past. This WORLD changed for ever during Y2K and most were to busy to notice and so now we live it. We are all changing and most either don¡¯t realize it or acknowledge it. It¡¯s what we do well. Our most important social component in life is ignorance and don¡¯t anyone try to take that away from us. I hope the MFJ owner enjoys his retirement as he should, I¡¯m sure he worked for it putting up with all of us. Hah! ?I¡¯m a Drake and Elecraft fan. I like where they came from and those who designed them but I¡¯ve had others as well.?On Apr 26, 2024, at 3:44 PM, DavidC KD4E via groups.io <qrv@...> wrote:
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Re: MFJ to go out of business
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýShrinking? New licensees are happening daily, preppers, and others. Contesting (which drives a lot of upscale buying) seems to be healthy. The problem for most businesses are cheap products one may buy,
directly, from Chinese companies online (bypassing the middleman and markup), and a weaking economy.
On 4/26/24 16:26, Steve Wedge, W1ES/4
via groups.io wrote:
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Re: MFJ to go out of business
I like to think that Martin gave the added companies a new lease of life for awhile. The market has been shrinking, long-term, and there¡¯s only so much you can do against demographics.? Steve Wedge, W1ES/4 Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. Sent from for iOS On Fri, Apr 26, 2024 at 15:16, Joe - W7RKN <w7rkn.7@...> wrote:
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Re: MFJ to go out of business
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýWhat does that have to do with MFJ going out of business?? The owner is 80 years old, he doesn¡¯t wish to continue. ?Can¡¯t say as I disagree with him! I just hate to see all those major brands they accumulated over the years, being hung out into the wind!? Ameritron, Hygain, Cushcraft, etc. ? Joe ¨C W7RKN ? From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Robert K9TWC via groups.io ? Most will find a one to blame but really it¡¯s our own fault for not keeping and eye and hear on problems and speaking up until it¡¯s after the fact. We always find someone else to blame while disregarding the issues onto others or their institutions. We should have, could have, and now it¡¯s to late while the herd is pushed out of the past it ignored. The things you blame for now were put in motion 20 plus years ago. Civility is everything. The world is changing and change is the essence of life. Deal with it! |
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Re: MFJ to go out of business
No need to scold.? Steve Wedge, W1ES/4 Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. Sent from for iOS On Fri, Apr 26, 2024 at 14:50, Robert K9TWC <rhadley06@...> wrote:
Most will find a one to blame but really it¡¯s our own fault for not keeping and eye and hear on problems and speaking up until it¡¯s after the fact. We always find someone else to blame while disregarding the issues onto others or their institutions. We should have, could have, and now it¡¯s to late while the herd is pushed out of the past it ignored. The things you blame for now were put in motion 20 plus years ago. Civility is everything. The world is changing and change is the essence of life. Deal with it! |
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Re: Another TR7 Journey begins
Got the new 10 turn pots installed and wow what a difference!? ?Got a dumb question - WB4HFN says in his "Identifying the Drake TR7 Transceiver" to use the 1K resistor at the top right of the power supply board as the test point to set 10 volts.? The service manual says to use the 10 volt trace on the parent board.? Does it make any difference which one is used?
73, Bill NZ0T |
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Re: MFJ to go out of business
Robert K9TWC
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýMost will find a one to blame but really it¡¯s our own fault for not keeping and eye and hear on problems and speaking up until it¡¯s after the fact. We always find someone else to blame while disregarding the issues onto others or their institutions. We should have, could have, and now it¡¯s to late while the herd is pushed out of the past it ignored. The things you blame for now were put in motion 20 plus years ago. Civility is everything. The world is changing and change is the essence of life. Deal with it!On Apr 26, 2024, at 1:05 PM, Steve Wedge, W1ES/4 via groups.io <w1es@...> wrote:
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Re: MFJ to go out of business
Jim, I¡¯ve been thinking the same thing. ?OTOH, I have no idea what his sales figures are, vs pre-2020, and am not privy to his balance sheet. It could be a move to get a waffling buyer to commit. ? Steve Wedge, W1ES/4 Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. Sent from for iOS On Fri, Apr 26, 2024 at 10:51 AM, Jim Shorney <jimNU0C@...> wrote:
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Re: Old Drakes ALC
Any processor that causes the output signal to not be a perfectly linear reproduction of the input signal creates distortion. Even ALC systems cause distortion, albeit usually?small and not a problem. Several years back I tested 4 different audio processors for distortion. The best was a split band audio processor, the worst was the Ten Tec RF processor. The Ten Tec unit had goof RF filters so the harmonic distortion was not an issue, but it had such awful IMD distortion that I got tired of the poor audio reports I frequently received and eventually sold the unit. I haven't seen any info on how well the processors in the new generation of digital transceivers work and would be interested if anyone could shed some light on how they compare with the older analog approaches. Bill N0CU On Fri, Apr 26, 2024 at 10:35?AM Jim VE7RF via <jim.thom=[email protected]> wrote:
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Re: Old Drakes ALC
On 2024-04-26 09:35, Jim VE7RF wrote:
I experimented with my 6 x band digital compressor,*** Is that something you bought? Or something you made? I've played with audio with a PJRC Teensy 4. They have an audio design tool on their website; you drag and drop mixers, filters etc, and it creates a skeleton "C" program to implement it. I used that to create a CW filter/translator for my KWM-2, which is horrible for CW as is - because the sidetone & received signal are 1750Hz. I mix it down to 650Hz and do some serious audio filtering. All in software. - Jerry, KF6VB |
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Re: MFJ to go out of business
per ex employees who live in the same town, who know the current employees etc.? a buyer was found 2 yrs ago, but that dragged on and fell through.? ?It went back up for sale 6 months ago.? ?And no, DXE did not offer to buy em out.? ? A full page ad in QST, and that was eons ago, was $20k.? ? QST / ARRL is gonna take a massive hit.? ? I did order a bunch of misc amplifier parts yesterday, zero issues, and on it's way.? |
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Re: MFJ to go out of business
Plus, no one could (Or was allowed) go to work, so all aspects of a mail order business were affected, big time!
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Joe - W7RKN -----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of jerry-KF6VB via groups.io Subject: Re: [DRAKE-RADIO] MFJ to go out of business On 2024-04-26 05:50, Dan K9DTC wrote: What I don¡¯t understand is the owner mentions covid affected his*** It also caused disruptions in the supply chains. You couldn't get parts. - Jerry, KF6VB |
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Re: Old Drakes ALC
?"Note that as a rule of thumb the ratio of peak to average in male speech is about 10db." ? Point is, without basic ALC, your average power output on SSB would be through the floor.? ?That's assuming using just enough audio drive to? just drive the xcvr to say 100w pep out.? ?You can see that on any average reading wattmeter. ? I experimented? with my 6 x band digital compressor, and even with the rls times as low as 20 msecs, it works pretty good, but isn't like a RF clipper.? ?Done correctly, you can get globs of talk power....and zero distortion...and have no alc showing on the xcvr.? ? The problem with RF clipping is..... the filters only remove the out of band imd, and not in band imd...so there is a limitation there.? ?Another method is to use ALC, but with a much faster rls time constant.? Done right, that will be distortion free...and just as effective as rf clipping.? ? And any processing scheme will work at an optimum level if preceded by a good audio compressor.? You need to feed a constant level? into the device/xcvr etc.? With a boom headset, the mic is a constant distance from ur mouth.? To kill background noise pickup, either a gate, multiband gate, or downward expander is used.? ?A noise gate is just a high ratio downward expander.? ? remember when? TV commercials came on....and just about blew u outa the chair ?? ?I looked at em on an SA....and what happened when the commercials came on,? is all the peaks dropped exactly .5 db? all the way from lows...to highs, (20 hz to 20k)... meanwhile the average increased by exactly 6.0 db...again right across the entire passband.? ? And that's on top of regular program material.? ? With ham radio ssb, on RX, we have AGC.? ?S meters are peak reading devices....they won't depict average power.? On the old drakes, from S3? to 60 db over S9 only increased the audio output by a mere 3 db.? It's all squashed flat. |
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Re: MFJ to go out of business
Post-Covid labor supply also continues to be disrupted and expensive. Business needs a certain amount of margin to be worthwhile. Particularly a manufacturer like MFJ that tended to make items on the lower end of the price spectrum, customers may not be willing to absorb the price increases. Everything I buy at the grocery store post-Covid is either smaller, more expensive, or both smaller and more expensive. Most of MFJ's products don't have any more corners that could be cut.
Scott, KK7CAI |
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Drake B Line Twins For Sale
#ForSale
Tim Randa
Have a nice Drake station I'd like to sell.
I have come to the conclusion that my eyes are too poor and my hands too shakey to trouble shoot and repair the tube radios I have loved through the years. Recently repaired/aligned by Ron Baker. No issues, several pieces. Please email direct for complete info. Picture on my QRZ page. Pickup only at this time in Wichita, KS 73 de Tim? K?FL |
DavidC KD4E
Ham Radio