ARRL article says by year's end:
http://www.arrl.org/news/surfin-got-heathkits
and:
http://www.heathkit.com/
http://www.arrl.org/news/surfin-got-heathkits
and:
http://www.heathkit.com/
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The Return of Heathkit
- Thread starter rtc
- Start date
D
Darth_vader
Guest
Awesome.
So, are they still the same company or some modern-day nameless Chinese contractor using the Heathkit badge under licence?
So, are they still the same company or some modern-day nameless Chinese contractor using the Heathkit badge under licence?
J
jhguthlac
Guest
Had a couple of Heathkit transmitters and loved them.
N
nocomradio
Guest
Sad, but not surprising. How on earth would you get any youngsters involved in something that takes so much patience and time and learning to see results. If it ain't instant, it ain't happening for most these days.
D
Darth_vader
Guest
Well, there you go, Tom Wells. Now you know.
nocomradio said:
I'm surprised the original Heathkit lasted as long as it did. The cost of the kits wasn't much lower than buying assembled goods - either TVs, stereos, or ham gear. Even though you built it yourself, there were still labor costs for packaging up the parts, plus tech-writer and engineering salaries.
Performance-wise, a properly-assembled Heathkit rig would work just as well as the contemporary offerings from Drake, Swan, or Hallicrafters. But it took that much more time and knowledge to get everything working right. I built a few Heathkits in my time, the last being an HW-9 QRP CW transceiver in 1978. Worked great, but I could have bought an assembled rig from Ten-Tec for about the same amount of money.
KeithE4 said:
What you've said is certainly true but the big advantage I remember is that, once built, you knew exactly how to tune, retune and repair the appliance if it developed problems. That was particularly true of their early TV sets which, in those days, could actually be repaired instead of replaced.
It's going to be a real interesting day when no one is left who understands how anything works.
I only ever built the little code practice oscillator as far as a radio project. Probably about 1970.
My Dad and I put up a Heathkit garage door opener,
and our neighbor built the 25" color TV, which worked really well into the late 90's.
The code oscillator still works just fine.
I suppose no one will need to know anything about anything in the future.
Or is it only electronic knowledge that will become obsolete?
What I do perceive is everything becoming ever-more reliant upon electronics, along with an almost religoius zeal
to avoid learning anything about how any of it works.
Apple turned that concept into the best marketing scheme ever.
Like learning about how to navigate for yourself or read maps, we'd rather pay someone else and/or have another gadget.
Hate to sound fatalist, but as one who has to make things work, I'm going to be happy in some ways when
technology finally bites us back, because we have it coming.
I only ever built the little code practice oscillator as far as a radio project. Probably about 1970.
My Dad and I put up a Heathkit garage door opener,
and our neighbor built the 25" color TV, which worked really well into the late 90's.
The code oscillator still works just fine.
I suppose no one will need to know anything about anything in the future.
Or is it only electronic knowledge that will become obsolete?
What I do perceive is everything becoming ever-more reliant upon electronics, along with an almost religoius zeal
to avoid learning anything about how any of it works.
Apple turned that concept into the best marketing scheme ever.
Like learning about how to navigate for yourself or read maps, we'd rather pay someone else and/or have another gadget.
Hate to sound fatalist, but as one who has to make things work, I'm going to be happy in some ways when
technology finally bites us back, because we have it coming.
Once in a while when I calm down long enough for my brain to contemplate the universe, I ask myself how we (the survivors) would go about re-establishing civilization if the big bomb came, or a new ice-age came, or some other calamity wiped out our knowledge base.
The difference might be that we would have memory of what was possible in the past. When we read history we study people who had no idea what was possible so they searched to find out.
If we all ended up like Gilligan's Island on a massive scale... could we recreate aspirin? How long would it take us to figure out how to make glass? How long would it take beings to figure out metallurgy and come up with iron and steel, not to mention a rainbow collection of alloys.
Yes, I get significantly disgusted every time I visit Radio Shack. If RS doesn't have parts and kits who does. Fry's does have a lot of components.... but seldom do they have the ones I am looking for on that particular day.
We who qualify for AARP membership today have lived through a spectacular era. When we buried my Dad 15 years ago I sat down and wandered through all the memories he had shared with me. He had lived for almost 50% of the years the US has existed. Between the two of us, it seems like "we have seen it all!"
But not all is lost. We laugh at Newt Gingerich, but our grandchildren will probably examine and maybe camp out on the moon. Our grandchildren splice molecules rather than solder wires, and they will likely cure a lot of cancers and find some way to redefine economics so that people living in what are now undeveloped countries can join civilization. I would find participating in that more thrilling than hooking up the correct wires on a ham radio.
But most of us here in this discussion are not going to be part of that generation, so I guess after a bite to eat, I will wander upstairs and see what I can do to rewire and finish wiring up my little voice studio. That is something my Dad never got to do!
The difference might be that we would have memory of what was possible in the past. When we read history we study people who had no idea what was possible so they searched to find out.
If we all ended up like Gilligan's Island on a massive scale... could we recreate aspirin? How long would it take us to figure out how to make glass? How long would it take beings to figure out metallurgy and come up with iron and steel, not to mention a rainbow collection of alloys.
Yes, I get significantly disgusted every time I visit Radio Shack. If RS doesn't have parts and kits who does. Fry's does have a lot of components.... but seldom do they have the ones I am looking for on that particular day.
We who qualify for AARP membership today have lived through a spectacular era. When we buried my Dad 15 years ago I sat down and wandered through all the memories he had shared with me. He had lived for almost 50% of the years the US has existed. Between the two of us, it seems like "we have seen it all!"
But not all is lost. We laugh at Newt Gingerich, but our grandchildren will probably examine and maybe camp out on the moon. Our grandchildren splice molecules rather than solder wires, and they will likely cure a lot of cancers and find some way to redefine economics so that people living in what are now undeveloped countries can join civilization. I would find participating in that more thrilling than hooking up the correct wires on a ham radio.
But most of us here in this discussion are not going to be part of that generation, so I guess after a bite to eat, I will wander upstairs and see what I can do to rewire and finish wiring up my little voice studio. That is something my Dad never got to do!
Tom Wells said:
I think our ancestors also wondered about that very same thing. But consider that at one time almost every person knew something about farming. Over time it dwindled as farmers got more efficient and not everyone had to grow their own. That allowed some of the population to explore other venues and from that have come the explosion of technologies we have today. If you think about the evolution of mankind we are still in its very early stages.
As time passes we humans tend to specialize more and more into areas not even considered decades ago. So what if only a few percentages of us can manually calculate using pencil and paper - we have machines to do that, and men who know how to build those machines. All we need to know is how. And that creates empty space for more specialized pursuits.
N
nocomradio
Guest
I think about many people I have known over the years and now long gone, who saw things progress from horse and buggy to men on the moon and beyond. I also realize that I too have seen leaps and bounds in technology too. And I still do on an almost daily basis. I also find myself disgusted to some degree with the throw away mentality and the lack of interest in learning, but I also have to keep things in perspective too. It is a different era.
Who knows what will be the next big thing. Will it improve our lives, or just add more social problems and create more issues? We won't know and I doubt that in the past anyone else did either. They had to wait just the same and see what the outcome was.
Who knows what will be the next big thing. Will it improve our lives, or just add more social problems and create more issues? We won't know and I doubt that in the past anyone else did either. They had to wait just the same and see what the outcome was.
The first SWL gear I had was a Heathkit Regenerative radio. That was when shortwave listening was in its heyday. I also owned a Heathkit Mohecan.
nocomradio said:
The "throw away era" is nothing more than economics. It costs less to build a new one than it does to fix the old one. Consider semiconductors or automobiles. In each case the tools necessary to design, build and repair are economically out of reach of ordinary people. In the old days repairs and maintenance could be completed with an ohm meter, oscilloscope or some gauges and a toolbox full of wrenches. Now our products are so complex they require a significant investment to be able to work on them.
But, to a degree, the old world still exists. I can build a computer with pre-manufactured parts although I don't have the knowledge or resources to manufacture every piece part on my own. The satisfaction is still there, if not exactly like the potter of old.
Part of the "out of reach' is legitimate. Part of the technology in our cars, our dishwashers, our telephones is beyond the skill-set of even teckie consumers. What can be frustrating is that part which is purposely put out-of-reach so that we are required to return to the vendor for repairs and service. And even then, when society (government?) told the manufacturers of automobiles that they were required to make vehicles that would meet the anti-pollution standards for 10 years / 100 miles, it was rather understandable that the car makers had little choice but to format the vehicle so that you and I cannot and will not get in there and booger up the parts that MUST work correctly for 10 years.
I don't see a comparable justification when cell phones keep changing power plugs and audio plugs so that when I get a new phone I have to replace my phone accessories... even though the current accessories work just fine!
But back to the Heathkit concept. There are a number of things I can repair or fabricate if I could go to retail and find the components, the parts. Practically impossible to do today. My soldering iron is getting hardening of the arteries from lack of exercise. ;D
I am still jumping-through-hoops on my latest project. I learned to type on a manual typewriter. I like a keyboard that has the ride and feel of a Ford 150 equipped for off-road duty. I have gone to the recycling locations and found an old computer keyboard that actually "clicks" and has tactile feedback to my finger tips. Of course it has a PS2 plug so I had to come up with a PS2 to USB converter. So, we are on a roll. But then I decided to plug into the 100 foot keyboard/mouse cable with repeater and the world fell apart. There must be three people on the face of the earth who would know how to make that work. I will be content when I find one of them... or the writings and diagrams of one of them.
P.S. There is a simple fix that probably fits very well into this discussion of buying technology because it has outrun us. I have discovered there is a factory new keyboard that will probably work just fine... even at the end of my 100 foot cable. It is a specialty product for the lads and lassies that are fanatics about computer games. The Razer Blackwidow keyboard at $150.00 by the time I get it shipped here reportedly will do what my salvaged $10 Dell keyboard will not do.
I don't see a comparable justification when cell phones keep changing power plugs and audio plugs so that when I get a new phone I have to replace my phone accessories... even though the current accessories work just fine!
But back to the Heathkit concept. There are a number of things I can repair or fabricate if I could go to retail and find the components, the parts. Practically impossible to do today. My soldering iron is getting hardening of the arteries from lack of exercise. ;D
I am still jumping-through-hoops on my latest project. I learned to type on a manual typewriter. I like a keyboard that has the ride and feel of a Ford 150 equipped for off-road duty. I have gone to the recycling locations and found an old computer keyboard that actually "clicks" and has tactile feedback to my finger tips. Of course it has a PS2 plug so I had to come up with a PS2 to USB converter. So, we are on a roll. But then I decided to plug into the 100 foot keyboard/mouse cable with repeater and the world fell apart. There must be three people on the face of the earth who would know how to make that work. I will be content when I find one of them... or the writings and diagrams of one of them.
P.S. There is a simple fix that probably fits very well into this discussion of buying technology because it has outrun us. I have discovered there is a factory new keyboard that will probably work just fine... even at the end of my 100 foot cable. It is a specialty product for the lads and lassies that are fanatics about computer games. The Razer Blackwidow keyboard at $150.00 by the time I get it shipped here reportedly will do what my salvaged $10 Dell keyboard will not do.
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