In a message dated 9/27/07 8:34:12 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> his whole station was classic - vintage > stuff. I mentioned it and he said "it got old by itself. It was new > when I bought it 35 yrs ago HI HI". > > And that got me thinking. > > In 35 years will be still be running our K3s and K2s? Some will. For that matter > > are any rigs being built today going to be considered useful 30 yrs from > now? As I ponder the question, I come to the answer of "no". I disagree. Look how many rigs much older than 35 years are still on the air. I believe > > they won't be but not because of any deficiency in the gear. On the > contrary, I suspect the K3 / K2 rigs just as durable and able to > continue operations for many decades, probably more. I believe they > won't be applicable in the future because we as a group of hams have > shifted our thoughts. We're largely caught up with getting the next > thing. We're expecting gear to change yearly and are prone to dump what > we have and upgrade. With that mentality, there is no rig that will > stand the test of time because we won't keep it. But that's nothing new. With a few exceptions, like the Collins S-line, most models of 'vintage' ham gear were only produced for a few years. This is particularly true if you consider various upgrades and versions as new models. Consider the Drake "4 line" receivers - they made the R4, R4A, R4B and R4C over a period of a dozen years or so, then stopped. Each version was a change over the previous, with the C version being quite different from its predecessors. Compare that to the K2 which has been on the market for 8 years with only two versions. The rigmakers of the past were constantly feeding that desire to get the next new thing, same as today. > > I know I'm part of the "problem" here. My K2 is 1.5 yrs old and I'm > considering selling to get a K3. The oldest piece of gear in my shack > is my MFJ antenna analyzer and that is about 3 yrs old. Everything else > is either new or is something I've bought in the last couple of years. > I just don't stick with anything for long. Oh wait, I take that back. > The aluminum from which I built my vertical antenna is about 10 yrs old. > That's really just personal preference. I've known hams who would buy and sell rigs all the time, and others who would hold onto something forever. It all depends on the person and their interests. One thing that *has* changed is the inflation-adjusted cost of our rigs. 40 years ago, when I became a ham, even bottom-of-the-line ham gear was a major investment for most people. New equipment even more so. Look up how much that S-line cost in its time, and then how much a typical ham earned in the same era. Think how many hours of work went into earning it. > As K9TTM and I chatted back and forth I was thinking about how it would > be to keep the same rig for decades. To always have that old friend > ready to go. I listened to his signal and thought about relay-based > semi break-in. I thought about tube warm-up. I thought about tuning > finals. I thought about 1000 Hz side tone. I listened to his signal > and adjusted my RIT to match his drift. I then looked at my K2 and was > VERY happy to not be running an old classic rig. Hams had full-break in way back in the 1930s. More than 30 years ago, I had it in a homebrew rig. Heck, the old HW-16 had full QSK. Warm-up with tube rigs varies with the design. An S-line or 4-line settles down pretty fast. Some older rigs would never stop drifting. Most were somewhere in between. Tuning up is something you learn to do and it becomes easy. And there's an advantage: many vintage rigs will operate into fairly high SWRs without a transmatch. If you didn't like the sidetone, it could be changed pretty easily on most rigs. There's lots more. The old gear was fun, and the new gear is fun - most of it, anyway. What's really important is that we have so many choices. > That silly little kit on my desk which cost far less than the S-Line > when new, works much better and has more features that Art Collins could > have dreamed of. Its design is also 40+ years newer. -- IMHO, the factors determining a rig's longevity (meaning how long it is kept in active use) are: - How much its features match current operating practices. - Size, weight and power consumption (not many folks have room for a Desk Kilowatt) - How many were made - How easy it is to keep working That last one is a biggie. A lot of vintage gear survives on the air because it's easy to keep going. A lot of newer gear is relegated to the heap because you can't get parts, or the skills/tools/test gear/documentation needed to fix it are rare and expensive. Will it be possible to keep a K2 working 35 years? I don't see why not, given that almost all the parts are readily available, the documentation is wide open and free, and expert assist is available from several sources. Plus when you get right down to it, the hardware part isn't all that complicated because so much is done in software. 73 de Jim, N2EY ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
