On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 09:32:38 -0600, you wrote:

>Ok, on this same thread, how much "capital" of various kinds does one =
need
>to start doing consulting?
>
>1.  Intellectual capital:  this is obvious, you need some expertise that
>someone is willing to pay for.  In our case it usually has something to =
do
>with product design.
>
>2. Good Will Capital:  A base of contacts or potential clients that =
think
>highly of you.  How many?  What sort?
>
>3.  Actual Clients:   How many moonlight jobs would you need to have =
lined
>up to tempt you to quit your current job?
>
>4. Cash:  How many months can you go without a client before starving? =
Are
>you married to someone with steady income and health insurance?
>
>5. Stuff:  besides an oscilliscope and hand tools.  Most people say to
>minimize investing large amounts in, say, a well equipped shop or a big
>stash of parts, and pay cash for everything.   A specialty like RF might
>require more specialized tools.  In 1979 I calculated that a minimum of
>$1000 worth of stuff was required to put an extra technician on a
>workbench in a CB repair shop, assuming he could share a scope and a
>couple of other expensive instruments with me.  Now that figure has
>probably ballooned.
>

I've spent some time looking at the RF stuff. For RF Stuff, it really
depends on what you are planning on doing. For example, I just bought
~$190k of stuff from Agilent (for my day job), and that got me 3 boxes
at over 50k/Box plus lot's of software licenses. (CDMA/GSM/802.11
protocol demodulation/signal generation capabilities)
=46or home, a decent Spectrum analyzer (hp 8594) is running $3k to $6k,
depending on options. That is really the heart of an RF bench. Decent,
but not great signal generator's will run $1k or better, and 2 would
be good. I haven't prices Network analyzers recently, but I would
guess that $6k to $8k would get you something decent.=20

So, probably for $10k to $15k you could get a decent RF Lab equipped.
Stuff like temp chambers, frequency counters, power meters, couplers
and combiners, etc would add up to another $3k to $5k, depending on
how ebay and hamfests are running.=20

One of the disturbing trends that I have seen from Agilent is an
increased reliance on instruments that are primarily software defined,
with software maintance required. This add's a yearly maintance to the
cost of an instrument. The RF Boxes I bought will require something
like 3k to 4k per year in software maintance to keep them useful. In
20 years, they will probably be useless. Something to thing about.=20


Dave

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