Send it to Watsonville for the best service. Let me give you a story of
my personal experience.
When I started with K2 repairs, I had Gary Surrency to bounce any
difficult situations off of. Gary was kind enough to lead me 'by the
hand' through the initial process. I was on the east coast area working
remotely with both Gary (Arizona) and Watsonville. After about 6 months,
Gary asked me why I only asked about difficult questions, and I told him
that the easy ones I had already solved.
Go on to my 'retirement' from repairs. Dave Van Wallaghen W8FGU took
over. Dave already had experience with the legacy gear that I was
working on. Still, it took about 6 months before Dave was fully
on-board, and after almost 2 years, he still asks about some of the
'really strange stuff' that he encounters, and I may or may not be able
to offer any additional information..
Bottom line is that it takes about 6 months to a year before a good
technician can be so familiar with the gear that he is working on to be
proficient on his own. He still needs some support that can only come
from the designers or those long experienced with the product.
Training new techs can be more efficient in Watsonville than in remote
locations. Keith is the current expert there (as well as Vic). and
support from them can be as quick as walking over to their 'office'.
So, yes, it takes a bit more postage to ship to Watsonville, but that is
where the expertise to properly do the K3, Kx2, Kx3, and K4 repair
resides. If you are talking about the legacy gear (K1, KX1, K2), then
that expertise is currently in Michigan. We have shown that remote work
works, but for other than the legacy gear, the best place is still
Watsonville, CA.
For the best service, accept the delays that are inevitable. It would
be nice to turn a repair in a day or two from receipt, but from personal
experience, when I had 14 repairs lined up, I was forced to take them on
a first-in, first out basis. If I had a difficult repair in-line, it
slowed down my expectations. When the number got over 10, I became
anxious and tried to get them out as soon as possible, but not
compromising my goal of making all repairs complete and tested when done.
73 and have a great Christmas (0r Happy Holidays if you prefer),
Don W3FPR
On 12/15/2023 5:46 PM, Pete Smith N4ZR wrote:
Sorry, Adrian - I hear you but I am not willing to accept that
location trumps everything. Sure it costs money to train new techs,
and I'm sure it's hard to recruit them, but what is the alternative?
Continue to be without a very expensive and essential piece of
equipment for weeks/months?
73, Pete N4ZR
On 12/15/2023 3:41 PM, KJ7SOY wrote:
Pete:
I can understand your frustrations. However I think your sentiment
that “the current situation needs to be addressed, either in
Watsonville or otherwise” doesn’t recognize current global business
realities.
As background, I lived in Monterey, just down the road from
Watsonville, for three years (2013-2016) and I know the area well.
Watsonville has a population of about 50,000 and the primary industry
(about 80% of the business in the area) is agriculture. People won’t
move to small/medium sized agricultural communities because there
isn’t a lot there for them, so importing skilled staff isn’t
feasible. Domestically there aren’t skilled persons around who could
be hired to work on the radios because again it’s primarily an
agricultural community.
The company itself isn’t large, I understand, and they’re going as
fast as they can all the time. With the current global labor shortage
it’s close to impossible to hire people in ANY industry, and
electronics fabrication and repair is no exception.
So basically what you’re saying is the company should buck the global
trend and import or train staff who are willing to move to a small
agricultural community in north central California to work on skilled
electronics repair. It just won’t happen. There IS no way to “address
the situation”. This is the global reality in a post COVID world and
it behooves us to be patient since it can’t be changed.
And FYI, uplifting an entire company and moving elsewhere is simply
impractical. And it still won’t address the labor shortage.
73, Adrian
K7RJS
On Dec 15, 2023, at 12:26 PM, Pete Smith N4ZR<pete.n...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Since I'm the one who started this discussion, let me summarize
what I think I've learned. The most effective argument, for me, is
the synergy among techs and relatively low marginal cost of adding
them in Watsonville, versus working with even established,
independent technicians elsewhere. That said, does anyone think
it's acceptable to have even a 4-week hold between arrival of the
item there and its entering the repair process? Elecraft equipment
isn't cheap, and I believe that the current situation needs to be
addressed, either in Watsonville or otherwise.
73, Pete N4ZR
On 12/15/2023 3:09 PM, Bob McGraw wrote:
I can totally agree with Joe, W4TV. At one time I was repairing
radios for various companies. I was doing warranty and
non-warranty repairs. The companies decided it was cost
ineffective to maintain independent repair services. Hence, I no
longer repair radios, and no longer have test equipment to do so.
There were other reasons as well, but I agree with Joe, W4TV, the
expert knowledge base is in Watsonville.
73
Bob, K4TAX
On 12/15/2023 11:57 AM,elecraft-requ...@mailman.qth.net wrote:
Message: 5
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2023 13:03:23 -0500
From: "Joe Subich, W4TV"<li...@subich.com>
To:elecraft@mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] User's Dilemma
Message-ID:<c45ff819-bde7-400f-b461-012a99b70...@subich.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
They clearly aren't interested in setting up a third party repair
center.
Given the cost of setting up and running a second "factory
warranty/repair center" it just doesn't make sense. Notice
that none of the other radio manufacturers offer duplicate
facilities on the east/west coast ... even those that did so
at one time have pulled back.
The cost of facilities, duplicate test equipment, duplicate
spare/repair parts, etc. simply can not be amortized economically
across one or two technicians. It's far more efficient to simply
add another technician or two (*IF* one can find a qualified tech)
"at the mothership".
73,
... Joe, W4TV
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