By now, you will have heard of the news that MFJ is ceasing manufacturing at it's Starkville, MS plant. For the benefit of those few that have not....
Dear Fellow Hams and Friends,
It is with a sad heart as I write this letter.
As many of you have heard by now, MFJ is ceasing its on-site production in Starkville, Mississippi on May 17, 2024. This is also the same for our sister companies’ Ameritron, Hygain, Cushcraft, Mirage and Vectronics.
Times have changed since I started this business 52 years ago. Our product line grew and grew and prospered. Covid changed everything in businesses including ours. It was the hardest hit that we have ever had and we never fully recovered.
I turned 80 this year. I had never really considered retirement but life is so short and my time with my family is so precious.
I want to thank all of our employees who have helped build this company with me over the years. We have many employees who have made MFJ their career for 10, 20, 30, 40 and more years.
We are going to continue to sell MFJ products past May 17, 2024. We have a lot of stock on hand. We will continue to offer repair service work for out-of-warranty and in-warranty units for the foreseeable future.
Finally, a special thanks to all of our customers and our dealers who have made MFJ a worldwide name and a profitable business for so many years. You all are so much appreciated.
Sincerely Yours, 73s
Martin F. Jue, K5FLU
(As an aside.... I hear as of yesterday, that the spot MFJ had picked out at Dayton has already been filled by the Collins Radio Group that made such a fine showing for the last couple years. )
None of this should shock anyone who has been watching. Martin was making subtle noises about retiring at Dayton last year in at least one of the podcasts from there. He's 80 years old, after all.
The resulting discussions on the topic, on some of the various Ham Radio forums were pretty evenly divided between those who will miss it and those who questions how they managed to get away with some of the QC issues they've been plagued with these last few years... some of the latter pretty gruesome. There have been several comments from apparently disgruntled employees of the place, complaining of a lack of tools, low morale, low pay and so on.
Without getting into those specifically, perhaps instead of talking about what Martin was supposedly doing wrong,
perhaps we should be more concerned about why he's the only one left
making amateur radio stuff on a large scale here in America.
What were the reasons that all the rest of them fell over, including the ones that Martin eventually propped up?
Assuming for the sake of discussion that the reports from the
disgruntled former employees we have seen are true, is it possible that those
conditions, those tactics, are the reason that Martin was able to hang on for so much
longer than the rest of them?
Mind, I will neither attack nor defend MFJ, or Martin himself. The
point I'm making is that there is a discernible, repeatable course that
helps keep businesses afloat when money and competition gets tight. With
some businesses getting tight os more of a help than with others.
A parallel would be the American automotive industry the effects of
who's cost cutting we've all seen over the last 30 or 40 years. Another
would be the grocery industry. I am quite sure we can all point to our own favorite examples.
Like it or not, the instinct to help a business survive when money is
tight is to be even tighter with money. The evidence would seem to
suggest that MFJ was more successful at doing this than were their
now-component predecessors (Cushcraft, HyGain, etc) along with a number of other companies that
specifically ham operators depended on. Allied, Radio Shack, Heathkit,
Lafayette, and so on. Take as evidence that MFJ lasted as long as it did, and (I believe) absent Martin's desire to retire, could have gone on for quite a while, yet.
Let me put this another way: Complain if you will about QC issues. You won't get much argument from
me on the point. But I will suggest we've seen a lot of businesses go through similar struggles.... and I suggest that absent those cost cutting
measures and the problems that ultimately resulted from those measures, MFJ would have gone belly up a long time ago.
Or, to China instead of
being built here in the States... ast which point, I suppose we could all bitch louder about QC issues.
Could Martin have sold the place? Maybe, but I'm willing to bet he was asking more than a lot of American companies were willing to pay. (OK, it's speculation but I'm betting Martin wanted to keep the company here in the states instead of selling the whole thing to China.. It meshes with how hes kept the manufacturing here at home all these years. )
Was MFJ over-valued? Possibly. Let's face it, gang, Ham Radio is a pretty vertical market, and size limited. The population is both aging and shrinking. The figures we have on this are from the ARRL and I suspect them to be under-reported. Outsiders less dedicated to the hobby than Martin has been over the last 50 or so years, will not see it as a solid investment. Sorry, they just won't.
So, while I'm sure that there will be some parts of the MFJ companies that will resurface, we won't see the like of MFJ, with so broad a line of Ham Radio products, again.
If that's really
the driving force here... less than laudatory projections of the hobby from a business annalist standpoint, who on Earth would want to be a part of that
marketplace? That doesn't speak well for our future, does it?
OTOH, How do you explain the continued presence of Yaaesu, Kenwood, etc? And yet, they are still here.
Well, come to think.... not here.... but THERE. And perhaps that's the elephant in the room, here. Those companies are not manufacturing here in the states,
and therefore are not subject to the same pressures MFJ has been in terms of wages, taxes, CODB and so on. Can it be that like so many other businesses both large and small, we've chased such manufacturing off our shores and that MFJ is merely the latest victim of an overly demanding governmental policy on business? The trend for a lot of years is for everything to be moved offshore. Are we making running a business here in America, from less than attractive to nigh on impossible?
And for our part, there is a bit of Irony here. It's been something of a Ham radio sport to mock MFJ. "Mighty Fine Junk" etc. And of course, now we're seeing Hams wailing and wondering what happened, and hoping it can be saved. I'm among the latter, but I'm not holding my breath, given the business pressures, as I've said.
Did we really need to wait until the last one died before we noticed the trend?
OK, I'm quite aware that this is not going to be a popular commentary among some of the older hands, but it is time to allow Techs some small slice of HF Phone. And obviously I'm not alone in the thought that it's actually PAST time for that move.
For the last 50 years, we've been shown happy Ham radio operators talking (Note the emphasis) with folks all over the world. But let folks get their first license, and what do they find? That they're not allowed phone on any of the bands that will reliably make those connections.
True, 10m, which is the lowest band they can use Phone or digi modes on, is open just now, but let's face it... that's not true for well over half of the 11 year cycle. And yet, we get folks wondering why Techs aren't sticking with the program?
Well, DUH!! ...given the bait and switch, who would?
Damned few.
I'm suggesting that a large number of people look at what they get with
the technician license and they're simply walking away without bothering
to even take the test. That's why I say I'm not as concerned about the
already existing techniciansas I am concerned about people we could be
attracting to the hobby.
And while there are some who suggest that the rules.... what techs get and what they don't... are clearly spelled out.... think about what a tech knows and doesn't know.... their inexperience is precisely why they're techs.
It's spelled out, all right..... To a group of folks, the majority of which are people who do not have the experience or understanding yet of what
those privileges actually ARE, and so what they can and what they cannot
do, only after they make the commitment. Where do you think the large number of SHTF folks come from who
laughably believe that the 2m HT is going to get to their family 200
miles away, are coming from? Obviously, they were attracted by what they
SAW and the image presented to them...., not what they read and in any event, clearly
did not understand. So, the ARRL in response to this, came up with a well designed and thought out plan in 2008 to deal with the problem, with the idea of making getting that first ticket more attractive.
Here's a preview:
ARRL has asked the FCC to expand HF privileges for Technician licensees to include limited phone privileges on 75, 40, and 15 meters, plus RTTY and digital mode privileges on 80, 40, 15, and 10 meters. The FCC has not yet invited public comment on the proposals, which stem from recommendations put forth by the ARRL Board of Directors’ Entry-Level License Committee, which explored various initiatives and gauged member opinions in 2016 and 2017.
“This action will enhance the available license operating privileges in what has become the principal entry-level license class in the Amateur Service,” ARRL said in its Petition. “It will attract more newcomers to Amateur Radio, it will result in increased retention of licensees who hold Technician Class licenses, and it will provide an improved incentive for entry-level licensees to increase technical self-training and pursue higher license class achievement and development of communications skills.”
As was fairly well expected, the proposal didn't fare well once the OT's got hold of it.Indeed, the proposal still sits in Limbo to this day.. Not the commission's doing, mind... if they figured it was a bad idea, they'd have killed it outright. But the ARRL, who initially supported the idea, backed off, once the responded to pressure from the guys who had to walk uphill barefoot through 2 feet of snow to get to school, and then home again, and figure because THEY were made to suffer everyone else should, too. So, the leauge stopped stopped pushing the proposal. Now, I asked (both then and now, as did others) who does the system as now established, serve?
I will point out that most who want techs to get a small slice of HF phone aren't pushing for quite so generous a portion as this 2008 ARRL proposal, but frankly recent events have left me with the idea that making it smaller isn't going to help convince the OT's to get on board with the proposal. I'll also point out that techs are not the ones pushing for this, but generals. ... people who have little to nothing to gain, other than a larger ham Op population.
Rob, VK4HAT, suggests.... and I think rightly....
..... But it does serve someone, it serves to keep people off our bands .....(...) The proof that these statements are
true can be found in the many posts saying Nothing to fix here. Just
Make Them Upgrade. It serves the political agenda of all newbies are
lazy and stupid. They do not deserve to be included with us because we
walked uphill in snow both ways to the fcc.
Frankly, what we're seeing here is older hams protecting their fiefdoms, while ignoring the damage being done to Ham radio as a whole. Think this isn't the US/THEM "Bubble" mentality? That it doesn't go back to a time before most of us were born? Observe from QST, from I think October of 1956.... (PDF), "Your Novice Accent". Tell me about how the "US v THEM BS hasn't been around long before most of us were alive.
Kurt, AC0GT points out:
The reasons for treating Technician as a "second class citizen" appears
to have shifted over time but there's been reasons stated for this
treatment for a long time. The Technician license was from the start
something of a parallel path to the old way of climbing the ladder on
licensing and by being the newcomer it wasn't well received. The old
path was "bottom up" with limited privileges on HF and then climbing up
to getting more HF privileges and then some privileges above 30 MHz.
Technician was "top down", starting with privileges above 30 MHz and
then later gaining access to HF. With such a deep culture in Amateur
radio at the time of people learning to start with Morse code and HF
this was not well received. With the Morse code testing persisted for
so long then so did this culture. I expect that the Morse code testing
persisted as long as it had in large part because the licensing selected
for people that liked Morse code, this thinking of Morse code skill
being the primary measure of an Amateur radio operator created a
positive feedback loop of maintaining that measure in the licensing.
What I see breaking this culture of treating Technician as a second
class citizen is the "aging out" of people steeped in this thinking as
well as the bifurcation of the culture with the licensing allowing each
"tribe" to live in their own bubble. With so little intermingling of
these "tribes" there's likely to be a loss of some of the continuity of
culture in Amateur radio. This loss of continuity has some pluses and
minuses but it was the choice of the "old school" to create this
discontinuity by hiding in their exclusive portions of the RF spectrum,
and by not being all that welcoming to newcomers in clubs and events.
They made this bed and now they have to sleep in it. They could have
taught the next generation to appreciate the history of Amateur radio
but instead they chose to create a disdain for it.
And that's it, exactly. And as Kurt points out there's a large number of older Hams who do not fall into this mold. But they tend to get shouted down, when the subject comes up.
The attitude we're discussing here is in reality,is the reason Hams never took advantage of the people living on 11m. Yes, the dreaded and much maligned CB crowd. The OT HAM crowd created that monster, and shot themselves in the foot in the doing.
How?
To answer that a fairly well parallel bit of history is useful. Consider the story of R. Caroline. Wikipedia reports that....
Radio Caroline is a British radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly
and Alan Crawford initially to circumvent the record companies' control
of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly.[1] Unlicensed by any government for most of its early life, it was a pirate radio station that never became illegal as such due to operating outside any national jurisdiction, although after the Marine, &c., Broadcasting (Offences) Act 1967 it became illegal for a British subject to associate with it.
The Radio Caroline name was used to broadcast from international
waters, using five different ships with three different owners, from
1964 to 1990, and via satellite from 1998 to 2013. Since August 2000,
Radio Caroline has also broadcast 24 hours a day via the internet and by
the occasional restricted service licence. Currently they broadcast on 648 AM and DAB radio in certain areas of the UK: these services are part of the Ofcom small-scale DAB+ trials. Caroline can be heard on DAB+ in Aldershot, Birmingham, Cambridge, Brighton, Glasgow, Norwich, London,[2]Portsmouth, Poulton-le-Fylde and Woking. Caroline can also be listened to over the internet including via music players such as Amazon echo (Alexa).
In May 2017, Ofcom awarded the station an AM band community licence to broadcast on 648kHz to Suffolk and north Essex;[3] full-time broadcasting, via a previously redundant BBC World Service frequency and transmitter mast at Orford Ness, commenced on 22 December 2017.[4]
Radio Caroline broadcasts music from the 1960s to contemporary, with an emphasis on album-oriented rock
(AOR) and "new" music from "carefully selected albums". On 1 January
2016, a second channel was launched called Caroline Flashback, playing
pop music from the late 1950s to the early 1980s.
So, essentially, the station existed, on legally tenuous ground, in response to GOVERNMENT not giving folks what they wanted. They found a way around the problem.
.
Similarly, CB gave radio hobbyists a means of doing what they are about... using phone, shooting some DX without going through the arcane and outdated code testing of the day. Argue if you will about the legalities involved, but in the end, such arguments are beside the point. In both cases, we have proof in hand that you do not solve a problem by simply passing a law.and that when laws become unreasonable, people tend to become outlaws.
Now, it will be argued that code testing is long gone. I'll stipulate to that point, and say it shoould have been gone long before it was removed from the books. And while technically true, in reality enforced code is still with us, in the form of restrictions on where the phone and digi modes can be used by newcomers to the hobby. Forget phone or Digi on ham band below 10m, if you're a tech. The picture we have been given for decades of happy Ham ops talking to friends all over the world proves to be an empty promise unless YOU walk both ways to school, barefoot through the snow, too.
(I will quietly suggest that that's the only reason that the screaming
about the elimination of code testing wasn't louder than it was, back in
the day.... They knew Techs would still be corralled. (And by the way I made that same suggestion about the time the
code tests got dropped. )
I am reminded that during the Napoleonic wars, the British army had
similar issues to deal with. Most of the officer corps was of the
aristocracy. God forbid that somebody should come along from the ranks
and be raised up based on performance to be an officer, because that
person would be a rank outsider, and would be considered "not one of us"
The message is clear:
LEARN CW. YOU WILL SUBMIT.
Yeah, some folks will be offended when I say that. I really don't care, because I'm more I'm offended that it is the reality. The (rather obvious) underlying theme is "Not One Of US" and "you are not worthy" So much for Ham radio as a welcoming hobby.
Of course, techs are supposed to be grateful for this abuse.
There are some people who simply need a lower class to beat up on. The
need for justification is stronger with some people than with others. Also, there is the idea that Techs are being set up for failure. Give the newbies the hardest mode to learn, and tell them they can't have any appreciable DX until they do.... and the majority will up and quit. That explains the number of inactive tech tickets. It all serves to keep the techs separated, and protect the HF bands from "intruders".
I've commented in the past about a serious lack of Elmering. Think about the connection between that and the attitudes I'm speaking of, here.
What is the result of this nonsense? If current trends continue,
in 10 years time tech is 70% of all licenses, in 20 years its 80% of
all licenses. When everyone is a newbie license, how do you upgrade to
general and extra when it requires 3 extras to sit an extra exam
session? Maybe that won't be so large a problem when the majority of
techs don't bother to renew their ticket, which is also a factor
attributable to barring techs from HF outside of CW.
As AC0GT suggests:
The way the licensing shifted into a hazing ritual was not that people
were able to operate on the air at 13 WPM but that they passed the 13
WPM test to get General or Advanced. These people didn't study Morse
code so they could operate CW, they studied so they could get the
exclusive spectrum for HF phone. The reason the government went along
with keeping the Morse code testing for so long was a combination of not
wanting to get hate mail from people that wanted to keep the Morse code
hazing ritual, the general slow movement of government, and the FCC
database of those trained in Morse code might come in handy for the
government should the Cold War get a bit warm and they'd need to start
drafting people into the military again.
The people that clung on to Morse code testing as their means to measure
status leaned on the FCC not wanting hate mail and the inherent slow
moving nature of government agencies to keep their hazing ritual as long
as they could. Again, this wasn't about being able to operate CW on
the air but that the individual proved their worth by taking the Morse
code test. Those that actually cared about operating CW looked to how
well someone used Morse code on the air, not the FCC database as their
measure of value. When the FCC made it clear they were removing the
Morse code testing then some of the people wanting the hazing ritual let
the mask slip and clearly stated the reason they wanted the Morse code
testing was to have that hazing ritual for entry.
The last remaining remnants of the old hazing ritual is the current
Technician privileges, because of that there's people that will cling
tightly to not changing anything.
Indeed. And those making those arguments for not changing anything claim that the reason they support such restrictions is that the quality of Ham operations and operators will go down.
Really? Down below, say, this?
Of course such nonsense is NOT limited to one spot on 40m, they are simply handy examples.I've seen personally, examples of such on other bands. So have most of us.
So, you believe giving a small portion of HF as a place for techs to learn, is going to spoil the broth? And you believe CB is the trailer trash of radio? You will forgive me, perhaps, if I fail to stand and salute.
Lets be clear, here. This is not about giving techs a "Handout". This is not giving out freebies. This is about bringing more folks into the hobby, and keeping them interested. This is also not a call to give techs the keys to the kingdom. Indeed, this is not even a call to instate the 2008 proposal as written.
Look, guys....The question is NOT the difficulty of the testing process, as is so often used as a derisive claim.
The REAL issue is what you get once you go through that process, which
in practical terms is akin to being provided the sleeves from a vest.
It's been pointed out often enough that there are lots of Techs who stay
at that level and / or drop out, outright. I have long thought as
you.... that they get in and decide "why bother".
The larger issue, though, there are far more prospective Hams who ,upon
looking at what you get for going through that process before even
taking the tests, don't bother at all, Huge turn off, particularly when
there's other avenues such as the much derided 11m, GMRS, FRS etc. The
thing that (apparently) goes unnoticed by many is you can't get them to
upgrade if you're not getting them in, in the first place.
The question before us, (and has been for a long time) is whose purpose does the current structure serve?
From where I sit it's clearly not Ham radio's future that benefits.
What's being called for here is merely a small slice of one or two bands that actually have some DX in them more than half the time. That's it.
Give them something to get a taste of DX. We will attract more flies with honey, than the vinegar currently being offered.
I've spent some serious time with the audio processing monster I've created.... and described here and here.
Now, after working with it for a while, I've found a few surprises along the way... both good and bad. Remember, that my object was to raise the average power output by several DB, and to ensure being heard more often.
The result was somewhat less successful than I expected in some areas, and wildly successful in others. Let's break it down.
As noted in the other articles, the average power in SSB signals in conversational transmissions, amounts to about 25% of rated transmitter power. I calculated that the signal could be raised to around 80% on average, assuming some serious manipulation of the audio stream prior to being input to the radio.
Trouble was, as I noted in the other articles,audio overshoots, particularly on transient peaks. Adding that 8db to my signal with the internal proc alone, added a mess
of distortion, both on the audio and presumably on the RF signal as
well. since it-pounded the poop out of the ALC. Didn't do much for the
intelligibility, either. The ALC and internal compressors were not up to handling the levels I was sending them. That said, I found myself encouraged by the transmitter output,which seemed to have the headroom to accomplish most of the gains I was after. If I could control the peaks, I'd have it. So, here we go.
I generally have a Heil proset-6 headset running to the mix console. Advantage: Close miking ensures a consistancy and purity of sound you simply can't get with a desk mic or a boom mounted mick, both of which I also have available.
Mix Console is a Gemini GEM05USB mixer to bring the mic up to lline level.
Understand that I'm bandpassing the audio at 100Hz to 2900Hz (-18db/Oct) at the Mix Console Outputs. No point in feeding the processors audio I'd not like to transmit anyway. And frankly, having the procs act on audio outside the radio's bandpass is counter-productive, and creates wholes in what Phil Spector used to call "the wall of sound."
Within that bandpass, I added an audio equalizer to the microphone amplifier which I have set for about a 5DB boost at 2100 cycles, and a similar sized cut to around 100Hz and below.The result of this setup is that the processors are working harder on
the boosted highs than everything else... maintaining a consistently very bright and punchy sound.
From that EQ, the path runs to the 2600 pro, which is a noise gate/expander/ AGC/ limter/DeEsser
Understand, that the 2600 is designed as a Stereo unit, which can be configured as Dual, independent Mono. I'm using it in dual mono mode, with the output of the first channel driving directly into the second channel. The first channel is set for slow AGC and some fast De-esser action. The second is pure peak limiting.
Both channels employ some expansion... the first slow, and the second somewhat faster. This is to counter-act action further along the chain. The function of the noise gate is obvious... it turns the gain down when I'm not saying anything which means I'm not picking up echoes in the room when I pause. Once the audio makes it over the gate, it's picked up by the AGC and amplified to a fairly tight dynamic... one the peak limiters and the clipper-follower can use.
The only fly in this ointment is the internal compressor in the 991
which I cannot defeat. I've been able, however to adjust the
gates/expanders on the 2600 to counter the effect. To obtain full power,
the internal compressor ends up being driven to around 15db of
compression. A bit high for my tatse, particularly given what the rest
of the audio chain is doing, . No getting around that. So I'm forced into dealing with that with a slight of hand in the 2600.... since that internal compressor in the 991 is rather slow-acting, using the 2600's expanders to balance against that compression seems to work well.
Yes, the setup is complex, to be sure and literally a balancing act. But, once you get it right, it doesn't need much daily tweaking, if any.
The results are encouraging: I'm finding far less trouble is cutting through pileups, even if my peak signal is smaller at the received end. The ALC meter is running, normally at around 40% of total swing, which is somewhat below the recommended 50%, while the wattage hovers around 80%-90%. The lack of overshoots has the opposite sideband leakage under control, and the reports I'm getting are "armchair copy", even when getting low S-meter readings.
Total investments:
The 2600 cost be $160. The patch cables about another $76..(I had some of what I needed ion hand) About a week of every day use to get things dialed in. Very well worth the results I'm getting.
