Our Products:
A brief history of how we became a manufacturer:
Some years back, as part of our efforts to repair transmitters that had been “orphaned” by their manufacturers, we saw that there was a need to design (or sometimes just shamelessly copy) and build new or improved versions of some boards and assemblies that often failed due to lightning or surge damage, or had proved to be unreliable after years of service through bad design choices or parts being declared obsolete by their makers. With Michael’s background in PC board layout and the modern ease with which custom PC boards can be created and professionally built for reasonable prices, even in small quantities, MP&A was able to build up a few simple retrofit PC boards, including ones that allow modern snap-in electrolytic capacitors to be easily subbed in for expensive screw terminal types in the power supplies of various gear. Seeing how well those worked, and the ease with which they could be developed and deployed, we took on a much more demanding need: to replace the notoriously failure-prone diagnostic display in the popular Harris SX series of AM transmitters. Our prototype and first-gen units used an off-the-shelf Arduino microcontroller board mated to a color LCD display made by an Australian firm. This was a huge improvement over the original, which was hobbled by the limits of the tech when it was built (in the 1980s) and the unlucky choice of a alphanumeric display that proved to overheat and fail, and which was declared obsolete by its manufacturer many years ago. This display, now much more sophisticated and streamlined (our first four-layer PC board!) is in its forth production run, and has proven to be wildly popular; we have sold over 100!
Building on the success of this first major product, MP&A has gone on to develop a winning set of several retrofit products for the SX series of AM transmitters and the newer Gates series (also from Harris, and which share many of the same boards/assemblies.). We now also make several products that are intended for use with other transmitter types from other manufacturers. We keep at least one of each of the products listed below in stock for immediate shipment, and can gear up to get more out the door in short order.
Being a manufacturer has been a challenge, albeit a rewarding one, for our little firm. I never realized just how much detail must go into manufacturing even the simplest product. Starting with a robust design using real-world-available electronic parts, to finding sources for heat sinks, smoked glass, and other custom-made mechanical parts, to documentation, to developing clear assembly and test instructions for our people, and finally to staying on top of our parts inventory and sales so we always have product on the shelf or easily built up, making a product requires a tremendous number of pieces moving around the board - if you’ll pardon the pun.
Check out all of our cool stuff below!
