Any Heathkit Fans Out There?
erco
Posts: 20,254
Plenty of Heathkit manuals online at https://www.vintage-radio.info/heathkit
Edit: parent page at https://www.vintage-radio.info has lots of other radio info.
All my vintage ham gear is Heathkit, so I save these for reference. Fun to look at even if you're not repairing your latest Ebay or swapmeet find. Like a walk down memory lane!
Availability of these manuals comes & goes whenever the Heath name changes hands. Get 'em while you can.
Edit: parent page at https://www.vintage-radio.info has lots of other radio info.
All my vintage ham gear is Heathkit, so I save these for reference. Fun to look at even if you're not repairing your latest Ebay or swapmeet find. Like a walk down memory lane!
Availability of these manuals comes & goes whenever the Heath name changes hands. Get 'em while you can.
Comments
I also at one time had a heathkit RC radio kit with 3 servos. The servos were miniature size and had one IC back then. The radio was analog in the ham band I believe. Ended up selling it since the plane it was used with crashed.
Mike
I built a number of o'scopes, VTVMs, and waveform generators for my high school's electronics class. I was just learning the subject, so a lot of the kit internals were voodoo to me. BUT, they sparked my interest even more. In 1972, I bought and built an AA-1214 "integrated stereo amplifier" that I still use to this day. A few years ago, an AR-1214 stereo receiver was sniped off Ebay. After doing some repair, it's in use in my lab, connected to a couple of hand-built speaker cabs loaded with Radio Shack components.
Heathkit documentation has been the standard I use when judging my own, and other's, writings.
BAMA (boat anchor manual archive) used to have them all but had to delete a few years back when someone claimed the IP. Now they are loading back up.
http://bama.edebris.com/manuals/
Real Heathkit manuals still fetch a fair price on Ebay. Unbuilt Heathkits are solid gold.
Here's a repro crystal radio kit for $140 shipped! https://www.ebay.com/itm/293535802296
-Phil
Knight kits are also a favorite.
Here's my 6-transistor portable radio, GR-151. Still works, but the controls are scratchy and the leather case is cracked. The manual is dated 12/1/1961. Wow, such fat transistors! "All the transistors in the radio are of the germanium type, although silicon transistors could be made to perform satisfactorily also."
That looks like an AM radio, what no FM?
That can't be the original speaker. It should be dust by now.
Mike
Just as Phipi described, I spent my paper route money on ham gear (and a hang glider, but that's for another forum). When I was 15 and lived in Virginia, I had the classic Novice station: HR-10B receiver, DX-60B transmitter and an HG-10B VFO, the latter being the only one I built myself. This was all CW (morse code) equipment and I had a blast. Learned a lot from my local Elmer (affectionate term for a helpful experienced ham).
I got a great email out of the blue last year. One of my random CW contacts from 1976 tracked me up on the web and sent photos of his wall of QSL cards, including mine. After making contact, hams snail-mailed their station postcards to each other to verify. Some people try to earn the "Work All States" award for making contacts in all 50 states.
It's been a long time since I last looked at this. The educational value of the manual is outstanding, vintage Heathkit.
At the UC Berkeley dorms, my assigned roommate was one of these guys who can hear morse code as if it were his mother tongue, and he was big into DX, and he collected QSL cards and travelled to distant S. Pacific islands for the contests. Once we set up for ARRL field day out in the hills near the Russian River, one tent for CW and one for SSB. A couple of representatives from a local hippy commune paid us a visit to complain about the waves and the bad karma and the truly annoying noise from the generator. We didn't do very well, blamed it on the sunspots. I lost interest in the hobby not too long after that, but it was a fun start into electronics.
New devices too! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague talks about the crappy NEW electrolytics that have failed recently. What a shame to think that a lot of newish consumer electronics have been thrown out just due to bad caps. While running a few years ago, I found a beautiful monitor on the curb and brought it home. All it took was replacing a few caps to get it working again.
I have a 42" plasma TV at home in the garage that I'm debating parting with. Bought ~2006 from Fry's (whodat?). Now it works fine for 30 minutes, then the colors get all jacked up as it warms up. Surely a capacitor issue and an easy fix if I decide to do it. But it weighs a ton and gets hot in use. I can buy a brand new featherweight LED that size for $150... so tempting. The pros & cons of living in a disposable society.
He took me to the FCC office in Indianapolis for my general class exam. He thought I'd flunk the 13 wpm code test because I had given up longhand for printing and couldn't transcribe fast enough. But I managed to pass anyway, mainly due to the FCC's Morse being tempo perfect, compared to the Smile I'd been practicing with (me, keying random characters -- so I couldn't memorize the sequence -- onto audio tape and playing it back).
-Phil
Was WN9HJK,WA9HJK
Now AD7YF (but inactive)
Mike
I slammed out my own keyer (built & programmed) in about 2 hours to show a local ham club. There was interest if I'd make a kit. I didn't take it very seriously but if this guy actually sells these in any quantity I may have to reconsider!
This could easily be done with a BS-1, Ken! Wanna go halfsies?
What? you didn't use a cloths pin. No fare using 3D printed parts.
Mike
But yes, I have always been a fan of found objects to build quickly. Paper clips, rubber bands, coat hangers, duct tape, etc. Gap-filling superglue & baking soda still save my bacon regularly.
I have been known to drill 2 parts together and just leave the drill bit in as a hinge pin.
But this model needed two pivots, so I had to use screws instead.
My father managed one of the stores in our area. I used to love going to see him "at the office." My first soldering experience was with one of their kits (a blinky PCB with an R2D2-like silkscreen). Unfortunately, Heathkit folded before I was fully hooked on hardware. It would take another 30-ish years before I came back to it. But I never forgot Heathkit or the joy I experienced going there.
Alas, I never achieved enough morse to get the full call, and now of course it's not required anymore.
I obtained my limited license in 1970 VK2ZTZ but let it lapse about 10 years ago since I hadn't been active for many many years - computers took over all my spare time.
However, I always regret not getting my morse license.
(What was this friend doing at a 2nd hand store right now? No idea. But it was my wife's first question to me, just before she handed me a Clorox wipe.)
Sounds like a great Corona project, versus the Turkey projects we do a Thanksgiving.
I had a hand-me-down heathkit o'scope as a kid.
I have a printed catalog from the 70s somewhere
Would you believe that at nearly every VCF East event (next one those three days in October!) I see someone's lovingly restored SWTP 6800 computer, and at a guy's table for buying stuff a bundle of the trainers? Well not last year. But before they moved the sale items tables they were seen there.
I complemented his talent at building it, and said it reminded me of how Lancaster would lay out his designs. Turns out SWTP might have been inspired by the consultant Don Lancaster.