The K4 on the other hand was/is trying to ramp production DURING the Covid19 and chip shortage. Much harder to do.
It goes to show the high price that domestic companies have actually paid for choosing to outsource almost all of your critical manufactured goods and know-how (PPE, pharmaceuticals, silicon chips, LCDs, RF filters, tool and die making, metal foundries, etc etc etc) to another country that might not always have your best interests in mind. Beware of fans of "globalization".
73, Ed
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The components used come from several different companies all over the world and not all are off shore, TI Linear tech, Freescale/NXP all have assembly houses in the US along with in other countries but if one critical component such as the LCD display used in the K4... which is probably from Japan is backlogged then that one single part shuts everything down.
Additionally; Elecraft designs and assembles the boards for their radios down in California and they claim that their local contract board house which does the assembly work has limited access to their facilities.
The restrictions for their board house is apparently due to both Semiconductor shortages as mentioned above compounded also because their contract board house workers have limited access to their facilities due to covid restrictions.
You cannot build a product if you can't get the parts and even if you have all of the parts, if your employees are restricted from going to work then even having all of the components in the world still won't do you any good at building and shipping the product.
If Elecraft had done it differently, like other US radio manufacturers did, they could have claimed that their work in the communication field was essential and then they would not have had any covid restrictions placed on their subcontractor board houses but even then without even having 1 part, still everything is stopped.