It is dependent on scale, David. The USAF flies large fleets of a
number of different A/C and has in-place materiel warehousing and
distribution facilities. They also have extensive records on
"requirements," the failure rate of components. So, for them, and some
civilian A/C maintenance facilities, it makes super sense. Many A/C
have thousands of flying hours left after the parts supply dries up.
B-52's first flew in 1952, and they still are. Almost nothing on them
is original anymore.
My suggestion was just a feeble attempt at humor however. I guess it
was even more feeble than I thought. [:=)
73,
Fred ["Skip"] K6DGW
Sparks NV DM09dn
Washoe County
On 3/10/2020 9:49 PM, David Gilbert wrote:
That makes zero sense.
What are you going to make a "Lifetime Buy" on? A synth? A front
panel? A tuner? You might as well buy a second (or third) rig since
you don't have a clue what might fail in the future, and if you buy
all those things separately (or worse yet the individual components
that go into them) you better plan on working an extra year or so
before retiring.
By the way, I spent my career in the semiconductor business
(operations manager) and I can say with great authority that many
discontinued devices had no business being offered for sale in the
first place. Companies (not just mine) would often develop a new
product line and bin sort for different ranges of performance.
Component A might have a 30% yield but have better specs than
Component B that had a 90+% yield. Component A would get designed
into more demanding applications and sell for a higher price, while
Component B was higher volume, sold for less, and essentially
subsidized the yields for Component A. That worked fine until
somebody decided they wanted a LOT of Component A, or the demand for
Component B dried up. No matter what anyone says, the market won't
simply bail you out by paying you three times more money for Component
A when you get in trouble, and after a while you have no choice but to
announce a discontinuance. I strongly suspect that's what happened to
the tight tolerance caps Elecraft used in the K1 band modules.
When I was the ops manager, I tried my best to squash that kind of
practice. Either make the process capable or face reality.
73,
Dave AB7E
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