In the wake of their acquisition of Cushcraft antennas last week, MFJ Enterprises announced today that they have reached an agreement to acquire the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), a publisher of amateur radio literature. An ARRL spokesman stated that declining membership numbers coupled with increasing costs of printing and shipping have eroded the business of the ARRL to a point where a merger with the burgeoning MFJ empire was attractive. MFJ, a manufacturer of radio accessories and antennas, had few publishing products in its expansive portfolio. The acquisition of the ARRL, leaves only the manufacture of actual radios the only portion of the amateur radio market that MFJ does not dominate.
MFJ intends to continue to publish the full line of handbooks and other publications for which the ARRL is known. The ARRL membership journal, QST will continue to be published as an appendix to the monthly MFJ/Ameritron/Hy-gain/Cushcraft/Mirage/Vectronics catalog. Readers should notice few changes.
There will be some changes in the operation of the ARRL though. The world famous ARRL club station, W1AW, will be moved from it's historic Newington, CT location to a new home in Starkville, MS. The call W5AW is currently allocated to the Big Spring Amateur Radio Club of Big Spring, TX but negotiations are in progress for MFJ to acquire the club and its callsign, which can then be re-assigned to the relocated ARRL club station. The most noticeable change may be the replacement of the Connecticut Yankee accent with the Mississippi southern drawl on the voice bulletins.
The planned acquisition is expected to be completed by April 1, 2010.
OMG! I was going to post a similar article on my blog. Wow. :-)
ReplyDeleteIt wouldn't surprise me if MFJ takes a shot at acquiring Ten Tec. Now that would ruffle some feathers. MFJ would get those metal cases it buys from Ten Tec for most of its products real cheap. Elecraft could be an acquisition target as well, though I think the owners are too busy assembling orders and debugging firmware to sit at a negotiation table.
In a related story, Ronco pitchman Ron Popeil announced a hostile takeover of MFJ, vowing to introduce a new line of amateur radio kitchen equipment capable of slicing, dicing and 999 other food prep tasks while delivering 1:1 SWR DC to daylight. Merchandising insiders already speculate that Ronco itself will soon be absorbed by a loose consortium of hamfest junk radio parts vendors controlled by a shadowy offshore entity know as WPE said to traffic in counterfeit Popular Electronics Registered Shortwave Listener Certificates
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