Hi Mike,

Most people don’t have the faintest clue how economics really works, even otherwise well-educated folks.  It drives _everything_ which is why the world is starting to resemble the last days of Rome.  The damage being done by clueless politicians and the unelected Administrative State at all levels of government is now being laid bare for all to see.

Most people don’t understand the laws of thermodynamics either, which start with “There’s no free lunch” (mass and energy are always conserved), and end with “You can’t ever break even” (entropy/chaos always increases up to the level of the universe with every conversion of energy).

If you like the price of energy spiking to about double in nine months, right on time for a worse Winter than last year’s, critical goods not being able to be offloaded from scores of continually-arriving foreign ships (let alone delivered to your local store), our citizens being abandoned overnight to be killed by terrorists, and otherwise witnessing the collapse of civilization, keep voting for the kinds of imbeciles currently asleep at the switch.

To quote from Pournelle’s and Niven’s “Oath of Fealty”, we’re witnessing “Evolution in Action”.  Only the strong survive and, yes, the barbed wire here in Montana is still working fine as both fencing to protect our lives, liberty, and prosperity, as well as a very nice center-fed, multi-band, half-wave dipole fan antenna array!

Good luck and  

Jim  KJ7JHE

On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 5:51 AM Mike Perry, WA4MP <editor@...> wrote:

> On Oct 28, 2021, at 9:50 pm, Mel Snyder <melsnyder@...> wrote:
>
> First Japan, and then China, crushed the US ham equipment makers. The speed with which old-line companies like Hallicrafters, National, E F Johnson, Clegg, etc crashed in the late 1960/early 1970s was breathtaking.


I’m old enough to remember the transition and to that I’d add Heathkit, so it wasn’t just labor costs that killed them. I suspect one reason was a broad economy of scale. When the Japanese used the transition to pc boards and transistors to take over electronic entertainment, that created an economy of scale (parts, assembly lines, manufacturing equipment) that helped the ham market despite its much more limited sales. And that transition was a factor. As a ham in high school, a local TV repair shop gave us old U.S.-made TVs that were no longer worth repairing. Almost all were hand-wired, with resistors and wires having to be placed and soldered from one tube socket to another. That’s an expensive way to build and TVs were expensive. We got our first TV the summer before my second grade. We were still using it ten years later when I went off to college.

To some extent the makers of ham gear also suffer from the same problem that haunts the makers of small sailboats. No matter how well-designed and built a small sailboat is, within a few years after it enters the market, the new sailboats are competing with used ones. Particularly in fiberglass, they simply don’t wear out. I bought one for $1200 well-enough designed that it had a longer run on the new market than most, but even there new could not compete with used. Someone in boat making told me that if it had gone back into production, it would have to sell for $15,000. $15,000 cannot compete with $1200.

Of course that ham radio market has another factor. Few people collect small sailboats much less large ones Quite a few hams collect old radios. That keeps their used price high.

There is a danger when large companies in democracies lose their ability to make some products, particularly with products that are vital in either pre-war tensions or wartime. Germany. for instance, dominated the making of quality binoculars at the outbreak of WWII. The Brits needed them, so I have been told an unwritten agreement was worked out. The Germans did nothing when Swiss companies bought (for resell to the Brits) far more binoculars than they needed. And the Brits did nothing when the Swiss bought larger-than-needed quantities of special metals needed in steel alloys.

Much has been written about how the Brits benefited from breaking Enigma, Germany’s military code. Little is said about how how those coded messages were received, many of them short range messages between nearby units. In many cases reception meant huge rhombic antennas atop 100-foot poles and connected to state-of-the-art National HRO receivers bought from the U.S. The ability of the U.S. to make such radios in the thousands was vital to the war effort. A memory of that still lingers. What remains of U.S. manufacturing of high-quality communications gear is driven by military contracts given to companies such as Collins.

Here you can find the history of those HRO radios. Note how they used coil sets to cover a wide range of frequencies.

https://radioblvd.com/National%20HRO.htm

—Mike Perry, WA4MP

> On Oct 28, 2021, at 9:50 pm, Mel Snyder <melsnyder@...> wrote:
>
> First Japan, and then China, crushed the US ham equipment makers. The speed with which old-line companies like Hallicrafters, National, E F Johnson, Clegg, etc crashed in the late 1960/early 1970s was breathtaking.


I’m old enough to remember the transition and to that I’d add Heathkit, so it wasn’t just labor costs that killed them. I suspect one reason was a broad economy of scale. When the Japanese used the transition to pc boards and transistors to take over electronic entertainment, that created an economy of scale (parts, assembly lines, manufacturing equipment) that helped the ham market despite its much more limited sales. And that transition was a factor. As a ham in high school, a local TV repair shop gave us old U.S.-made TVs that were no longer worth repairing. Almost all were hand-wired, with resistors and wires having to be placed and soldered from one tube socket to another. That’s an expensive way to build and TVs were expensive. We got our first TV the summer before my second grade. We were still using it ten years later when I went off to college.

To some extent the makers of ham gear also suffer from the same problem that haunts the makers of small sailboats. No matter how well-designed and built a small sailboat is, within a few years after it enters the market, the new sailboats are competing with used ones. Particularly in fiberglass, they simply don’t wear out. I bought one for $1200 well-enough designed that it had a longer run on the new market than most, but even there new could not compete with used. Someone in boat making told me that if it had gone back into production, it would have to sell for $15,000. $15,000 cannot compete with $1200.

Of course that ham radio market has another factor. Few people collect small sailboats much less large ones Quite a few hams collect old radios. That keeps their used price high.

There is a danger when large companies in democracies lose their ability to make some products, particularly with products that are vital in either pre-war tensions or wartime. Germany. for instance, dominated the making of quality binoculars at the outbreak of WWII. The Brits needed them, so I have been told an unwritten agreement was worked out. The Germans did nothing when Swiss companies bought (for resell to the Brits) far more binoculars than they needed. And the Brits did nothing when the Swiss bought larger-than-needed quantities of special metals needed in steel alloys.

Much has been written about how the Brits benefited from breaking Enigma, Germany’s military code. Little is said about how how those coded messages were received, many of them short range messages between nearby units. In many cases reception meant huge rhombic antennas atop 100-foot poles and connected to state-of-the-art National HRO receivers bought from the U.S. The ability of the U.S. to make such radios in the thousands was vital to the war effort. A memory of that still lingers. What remains of U.S. manufacturing of high-quality communications gear is driven by military contracts given to companies such as Collins.

Here you can find the history of those HRO radios. Note how they used coil sets to cover a wide range of frequencies.

https://radioblvd.com/National%20HRO.htm

—Mike Perry, WA4MP

Hi Wolfgang,

Rhett is spot on.  I use the resistive bridge circuit by the G-QRP Club at this link Resistive SWR Bridge (gqrp.com)
I had most of the bits in my junk box.
Switch position 1 lets you calibrate the moving coil meter.
Switch position 2 lets you test your antenna, subjecting your transmitter to a worst-case SWR of 3:1.  Also, with your antenna in one leg of the bridge, the hf power is split 4 ways, which means that lets say with a transmitter output power of 4 watts, you are only polluting the frequency with 1 watt. It also means you could still call QRL 'Is this frequency in use?', with a reduced risk of damaging your transmitter.
Switch position 3  connects the transceiver directly to the antenna.

It may seem difficult to buy 50 ohm resistors, but two 2 watt 100 ohm resistors in parallel (carbon not wire wound) work fine.  If you also put two 2 watt 100 ohm resistors in parallel in the fourth leg of the bridge in place of your antenna, you will have a 16 watt dummy load.

The resistive bridge should be connected to the transceiver with the shortest coax possible and any long coax run should be from the bridge to the antenna.

I can supply photos of my quickly built resistive bridge if required. 

Best regards,
Robert M0NVQ