I'm not holding my breath waiting for either of those to happen

There are a few places in the US that manufacture PCBs, but they are getting pretty scarce. I do have some sensitivity to the issue of offshoring. One of my first jobs out of high school was working at the local PCB factory in my hometown of Dallas, OR by the name of Praegitzer Industries. Dallas is a pretty small town, and at the time that I worked there, I believe that the factory was the largest employer in town. A few years after I left there, the factory was purchased from its local owner by Tyco. Then a few years after that it was shutdown.

More recently, I was witness to almost all of my colleagues at Tektronix in the manufacturing areas (Bldg. 19) get laid off as their jobs were sent to the China plant. I don't enjoy that happening, but there's at least one reason cited by management that made a lot of sense to me. The "center of gravity" of electronics manufacturing has shifted almost completely to China. Just about every supplier is either in China or close by in the Asia-Pacific region. It does make a lot of logistics sense to have operations close to all of the supporting infrastructure.

In my case, I'm operating on a shoestring budget and have to get the absolute most bang for my buck. The last batch of PCBs which I had made (the code practice oscillator) cost me a grand total of $9.90 plus about $15 shipping for 10 boards. On the batch of boards that I had made before that, my setup costs alone cost 5x that much money. I have yet to find any domestic operations which cater to hobbyists and small businessmen such as myself, and can offer that kind of an inexpensive rate. Such low costs on prototype boards means that I can iterate my designs much cheaper and quicker than I could in the past, which means better product development and less chance of me blowing hundreds of dollars if I screw up something in the PCB design (which I did a couple of times in the past as I taught myself PCB design).

If and when a domestic operation ever gets close to this kind of price point and can offer the same kind of convenience in ordering, then I will be happy to use them. Unfortunately, right now I haven't found such a place.

Sorry for the long-winded rant,
Jason

Isn't it amazing listening to the radio up and away from all the QRM? I did notice my 817 getting breakthrough from some nearby hill-top transmitters when I operated from Vollmer Peak in the hills overlooking Berkeley but other than that, the reception was ear-opening.

I'm very curious as to why you weren't getting out that well though. Big head-scratcher, that one. Perhaps some experienced mountain-top operator can give us some insight.

Looking forward to your next radio outing!

Jason

73, Dave W8NF