[hpsdr] Other Considerations for Alex

[John Ackermann N8UR]

I'm writing this on my own, not as a TAPR representative...

For those that want an Alex partial kit or bare boards, there a couple 
of things I'd like you to consider that will help you understand TAPR's 
perspective:

1.  Electronic parts have a steep volume discount structure.  If TAPR 
gets fewer orders, whether for the whole kit or for some components, 
because people source parts elsewhere that reduced volume could affect 
the price that others will have to pay.

2.  TAPR has limited office resources -- one person!  John W9DDD is 
basically a full-time volunteer, and he's done a heroic job managing the 
delivery in 2009 of Mercury, LPU, and Pandora, and very soon will be 
dealing with Excalibur, Pennywhistle, and likely Magister -- not to 
mention all the other products TAPR offers.  Doing bare boards or 
partial kits adds SKUs (stock-keeping units) and inventory that John has 
to manage.  That's not a trivial thing.

3.  Alex is a fairly complicated product with lots of solder joints.  If 
we offer a completed unit, we can test it and verify performance before 
we ship.  We've done that with all the previous assembled boards, and I 
think you'll agree that very few manufacturing problems made it to the 
field.  If we offer a partially assembled board, we won't be able to do 
that testing.  The finished product will have your solder on it, as well 
as ours.  If it doesn't work, what are the criteria for TAPR to accept 
returns?  If a board comes back, it will be a volunteer who has to 
troubleshoot and repair it.  What if the problem is because the builder 
used the wrong core?  Do we charge a labor rate for that?  Is being a 
rework technician the best use of our volunteers' talents and time?

These are all factors we are dealing with in trying to make a decision 
on what to do with Alex.  They are all reasons that make a partial kit 
unattractive to us.  It may turn out that we just can't solve the toroid 
problem, but a partial kit offering means we will have to deal with 
these issues and the increased risk and resource drain to TAPR that they 
represent.

For those of you who wonder what the #$@#^ is taking so long with Alex, 
I hope this helps explain why we're not rushing.

73,
John

PS -- I've spent most of the weekend doing network analyzer tests (17 
sets of before-and-after plots of insertion and return loss) on an Alex 
prototype with the Chinese cores.  Later this week we'll be doing some 
high power tests to see if the new cores can handle 100+ watts.  With 
that data Scotty and Graham will be able to determine whether we can use 
the Chinese toroids for production, and if so what circuit adjustments 
they would require.

PPS -- This points up another danger of the partial kit idea.  Using 
toroids other than the exact models specified may lead to unexpected 
results.