Availability of components falls into two categories:
1. readily available
2. difficult to get in a timely fashion
3. obsolete
Elecraft discontinued products that fell into all three categories ...
not only the third. Most of what they no longer sell is because they
made a decision they weren't forced to make due to external
considerations. They simply elected to focus on the K4 to the exclusion
of previous models. For me, that falls outside of the commitments they
made when I bought my K3 with it's supposedly modular nature that
according to their sales pitch at the time would allow the availability
of retrofitted (potentially upgraded) subassemblies even in the face of
component obsolescence. They did exactly that with the new synths while
they still had the K3s ... they just completely jumped ship once they
came out with the K4.
I don't have my head in the sand ... I just apparently have a better
memory than you and unlike you I don't have friends working at Elecraft
to color my judgement.
Dave AB7E
On 6/26/2022 1:13 PM, Jim Brown wrote:
On 6/22/2022 10:35 AM, David Gilbert wrote:
Some people have suggested buying a complete spare rig for parts. I
think that's ridiculous. If I'm going to put out that much money for
contingency purposes I'll buy a new rig from a company that didn't
put me in that situation.
Dave,
You are being unreasonably hard on Elecraft. They are a small,
privately held, US company. If you are unaware of supply chain issues
widespread across all industries, especially electronics, you have
your head firmly buried in the sand.
A Kenwood digital talkie I bought a couple of years ago lasted
slightly more than a year. Kenwood sent me to a third party repair
company. Have you investigated the history of ICOM or Yaesu repairing
their radios?
I'm quoting part of Wayne's response to my complaints to him (direct
email) about the K4 manual.
> Our tech writer took a different job in 2019 right when he was
> supposed to start the primary K4 manual. Then the pandemic hit, and we
> haven't been able to hire another one (try to hire anyone lately?). So
> this fell to me.
And this that I've taught my kids -- "The other guy's job always looks
easy."
73, Jim K9YC
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