Batboard

Some of you may already know this, i just found out today when i went to the Radiall/Larsen website to look up an antenna model.

http://www.radialllarsen.com

Let's hope they don't cheapen the manufacture of, or discontinue anything we regularly use.

Appreciate the heads up, but gave up on Larsen several years ago after NEVER responding to a quality control problem of defective/intermittent cold-solder joints in their base coils. I wish them well though. Cheers.

Never had that problem with them, thankfully.

Me either. Almost everything I use these days is RadiallLarsen.

I have used a LOT of Larsen mobile antenna's, perhaps i was just lucky, but never a bum in the lot buying from them.

Other brands though, issues here and there..

Having good luck with the Comet i have on the van now, so far so good, its held up.

The buyout may have no effect at all, but experience suggests otherwise. What was sacred to the founders can be tossed out like yesterday's newspaper when the new bean counters arrive. Pride in workmanship and courteous customer service goes right out the back door along with many of the people who made the company great.

I hope that doesn't happen with Larsen, but it might not be premature to stock up on some of the good equipment which works for you and is still inexpensive. Rest assured that someone is thinking of ways to cut costs, quality and outsource.

Yep, my thoughts exactly. I have dealt with this many times in the IT industry, the new bean counters come in, they change the process to make it cheaper, and then you end up with crap.

Experience in this matter tells me also that things might change more than the say. Even if they say they didn't do anything how would one know if the outside of the antenna looked the same, etc.

The original man who owned and ran Larsen was a ham whose
name I've forgotten (probably Larsen). However, he was active on the ham bands and I actually heard him one time offer to send an
antenna to try out to someone who was having some kind
of antenna problem. That kind of interest and care is long
gone, of course, with the advent of the big companies whose
orientation is strictly "bottom line."

As Seinfeld would say, "Not that there's anything wrong with
that." It's just a different world today from what it was some
years ago.

Tom, you're quite right. Mr. Larsen, I don't recall his first name, but I believe it was Roy, was in fact a Ham. He was a very kind and caring gentleman. I once called their Vancouver office after hours and Mr. Larsen picked up the phone and helped me along as if he was a clerk. Only at the end of my order did I realize that the head of the company was on the phone.

Through the years I've had only very pleasant experiences contacting Larsen. I found an overall friendly and responsible attitude with all of their folks. Larsen folks just seemed nice.

At no time over these many years in many calls to Larsen did someone in India answer the phone or did someone tell me that what concerned me was not their job or did anyone ever become impatient because I was ordering only one six dollar part.

I believe that Mr. Larsen have past on by now and hadn't been actually running the company for some time, but I wish that people of his caliber would continue to run the company.

Jim Larsen,

Wonderful guy, missed by the industry

Thanks, Stan,

Yes, it was Mr. Jim Larsen. My memory for names is a little fuzzy, but I'll never forget what nice fellow he was.