Heathkit. Am I the only one who used to build this stuff?
 

Just wandering around the internet and found some interesting things from the old Heathkit company. They are the ones who made electronic kits in the 50's until closing down in the mid 1980's.

They were an electronics nut dream, making almost anything you wanted if it had sparks flying around inside. I built a short wave radio, several test rigs and ended up building a 21 inch color television. Amazingly all of them worked!

Take a stroll down memory lane and remember the days when we had vacuum tubes and no internet...

http://www.heathkit-museum.com/hvmhistory.shtml

I built the shortwave radio. A neighbor built their color TV- and for the time I think it was rated as a GREAT set. It certainly beat the rca we had. I miss the build it yourself electronics- my kids don't understand why.
Gary

I built the flip out record player when I was about 12 or 13, the night I got it working, we had the New England blackout of much of the eastern seaboard and Canada. I plugged it in and a minute or two later the lights went out and my mom yelled "Hugh, what did you do!" I'm kind of vague on the year, but I think it was 1967.

I built a tachometer for my first car - a fiberglass body VW dune buggy, circa 1969.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1166415984.jpg

KB-10 shortwave radio I made back in the late 1960's while in High School. Listened to the world on this puppy.

KB,

You made me remember that I made one of their Delta electronic ignitions for my Father's car. When I got the car back after returning to the states the ignition was still on the car, still working.

Spent a lot of enjoyable hours with a soldering iron, reading the manuals and plugging in more resistors, diodes and transistors in the circuit boards. Wish they were still around...

I built a met station.....fun stuff.

Megasquirt is kinda like the Heath Kit of the Automotive World....

I built one of those light beam alarms that go across doors and A huge multimeter. I actually wish I still had the multimeter, as it was never used after being built and would like to try t out.

Dave

Dave,

Just looked and there are a lot of the old kits on Ebay right now. Most of them from the midwest and many of them not assembled.

May be buying one for my Christmas present! :)

Joe

I am too young to remember the company but my father used to talk about them when I was a kid. I was (still am) interested in ham radio as a kid. He even got an unbuilt radio recever that we built together one time. There are other kits coming available lately for the ham radio crowd, shorwave receivers and whatnot. IMO if Heathkit were to come back today they would be popular as long as they did it right.

I got a kit from Radio Shack back in 1970 or so that had a bunch of electrical projects in a wooden box that looked like a briefcase. There were coiled springs connected to a circuit board and a bunch of short wires that you connected to make each project work. It was cool and got me interested in this type of work. I had chemistry sets back when they included sulfuric acid, nitric acid, etc... and were capable of doing some great experiments. My basement looked like a mad scientist's place!

I used to build Heaths and Dynakits for folks when I was very young to finance my audio/amateur radio gear habits. What workhorses! Still have some old Dynaco Stereo 70's (although heavily modded) in various stereo systems. Great bang for the buck...(also built some of the old Allied and Knight kits as well).:)

Electronics kits are still available. In fact, the past few years have seen a revival of the DIY spirit and so you can probably find more kits and such today than ever before. For an introduction to this subculture, surf over to Make Magazine...

http://makezine.com/

The magazine is awesome. But the blog is a zillion times better. Make should be required reading for every mad scientist. I strongly recommend every one of you gives it a try. I think you'll be shocked.

Radio Shack kit for me too along with the cheapo chemistry sets and erector sets.

Joe is showing his age me thinks :D

I built this MK1 VOM about 50 years ago. Still works great.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1166458199.jpg

Somewhere around here is a VTVM, ocilliscope, signal generators and more. I built that color TV also. I think my first kit was around 1953, with help from my dad (now 90).

I too built them to finance my purchases.

My big treats were to go shopping in lower Manhattin’s electronics area. WWII surplice heven. That area was eventually bulldozed to build the World Trade Center.

Today Radio Shack still has (I think) a series of small books on electronics and projects. A good way to play with electronics is with the little “mock-up” boards that allow easy temporary connections to ICs. Vernier Software sells a great PC based analog-to-digital converter that turns an old PC into a voltmeter or storage ocilliscope. I have a 20-yo MPLI. An old PC can be salvaged for a power supply.

Best,
Grady

Yep Heathkit. One way to blow yourself up while paying lots of money to the people who designed it. The KB-10 was WONDERFUL!!! My dad and I used to turn it on in the garage. My mom gave it away after his death...

Now the HUGE 19" Colour (our first!) TV was another story... A bomb waiting to happen... The B/W TV was great! I don't remember the model numbers and I'm not 100% the B/W was a Heathkit, but I think it was.

I thought that was a porn site.

I built a transistorized radio and voltmeter in 1960, and my dad had built a signal generator he used to repair TVs. Great stuff.

I've built many electronic kits from them, but I have also built a Heath Bullit airplane from when they were an aircraft company before going into electronics!

RPKESQ

WOW, was that contemporary in the ‘30s?

Pictures please.

Best,
Grady

After the crash of '29 Heath decided that they could not survive as an aircraft company and reorganized as an radio (all the electronics there were) company. I built models and one full size flying Heath Bullit, I have to try and find pictures for you.

Joe:

Over the years I built their FM tuner, the Preamp, the Oscilloscope and a 19" color TV, I think that was one of the last kits they had. I wore a black armband when they quit the kit business. There are very few kit companies out there anymore.

Try www.ramseykits.com

I had the Radio Shack 120 Electronics kit as a boy. Made every project in it. My ol Man was able to score a ton of electronic components (resisters, caps, diodes, transistors, transformers, relays, meters...) I ended up building my own test kit. I didn't have the springs that the RS had, I used loose leads. The thing looked like a tangle of pasta but Popular Science offered up some scematics that proved interesting.

The last thing I made before I discovered girls was a Mini Moog Sound Synthesizer. I still have it. $50 worth of parts and way way fun.

AHA! Synth kits!!! Remember PAIA? Built all sorts of their stuff (synths, theremins, effects, etc)...

I should pick up an old Hammond, a few Marshall amps hook up that Mini Moog and let the good times roll.

I've built dozens. Computers, Ham equipment, test equipment, and 2 color tv's. TVs & Ham equipment gone, but I still have an H-8 computer & H-29 terminal in the basement..... oscilliscope, and a Hero-1 robot..... Not cheap, but great quality.

What would some of the cool things you can do with an oscilliscope besides checking out the wave shapes?

Mike,

When these were new from Heathkit the use was very limited in frequency. Not only that, the signal had to be repetitive without a camera.

Today’s computer interfaces allow incredible flexibility. Not only can it act as a classic oscilloscope but it is also a data-taker as slow or fast as you want. At whatever speed, the data-points can be stored in an Excel file allowing incredible manipulation, calculation and analysis. The graphical presentation (like an oscilloscope) is then easy.

The two basic specifications are:
Conversion speed.
Resolution.

The inexpensive ones I’m used to are in the range of 100K samples/sec. Professional level stuff (Tecktronix) are incredibly fast – in the high MHz range if not several GHz.

Resolution is typically expressed as “bits.” A 12-bit conversion resolution is limited to one part in 4096 (about 0.02%). At 14-bit it is one part in 16,384 ( about 0.006% and difficult for an amateur).

The two; speed & resolution, are mutually exclusive. If you want one you probably need to give up the other. Yes, you can get both. It just costs money.


All this stuff is great fun and every kid should be exposed to it as a pre-teen and young-teen. The reason we live in an “electronics age” is it does wonderful things. All this is easy and everyone can do it. Make it a fun Cub/Brownie, Boy/Girl Scout project with your kid. All this is appropriate for 7-13 year-olds.

If you don’t know how to do this for your kids – ask. This isn’t secret knowledge and many will help.

Best,
Grady

Mike, Let's revive the $3/day cookng thread for my foster kid returns. He will need that skill.
G.

Grady,

Funny you should mention the build up boards. I have one Ramsey kit at home now waiting for me to put it together. First electronic kit I will have done in 20+ years.

Ahhhhh.... the smell of hot solder! :)

Joe

Seems like only yesterday....Kept me off the streets as a teenager. Built them in a Ham shack in back of our carport. DX-60, HR-10, Twoer, Sixer and others. Then got mostly into old converted FM gear we bought from the power company. Oldest ones had dynamotors in them. Might as well have been coal-fired. Still have a few QSL cards left. Ken

I built all of that HeathCrap... Then went into the Marines as a Test, Measurement and Diagnostic Equipment Repair and Calibration Tech. I could go on for hour after hour after hour of boring, stupid things you can do with an O-scope... Damn. I wish I could get that time back...

"One word: software. It's the future, boy..."

Hi Joe,

I checked out ebay last night and found a newer version of the voltmeter I built, but it had been built already.

As for solder, Yeah, it does have a disticnt smell, but I am around it too much and it has worn off. Ahh safety, I have a charcoal/fan system, it's far from perfect, but better than getting a nose full. :rolleyes:

Dave

Grady - OK... so an oscilloscope is good for testing circuits because it allows you to see the signals at different points in the circuit by monitoring the signals at the input and output? So really you use it to correct faults? Is there a guidebook for the waves?

Mike,

Some time around 6th grade I discovered graphing and time (what oscilloscopes are all about). I promptly built a Heathkit. The problem with those old Heathkit scopes was that they only worked well with repetitive AC circuits. I recall making very slow RC circuits and measuring the voltage changing over an hour and more using my volt meters.

I think this is why I eventually enjoyed calculus so much.

Ken, I still have a WWII all-band receiver that originally had a motor-generator in the power supply. I think the input was 24 V, 400 cycle (Navy), not coal fired. I built a transformer supply to replace it. I should rehab that and reinstall the m-g. Thanks to Homeland Security you can’t buy an all-band any more.

Ok, off to sniffing some more solder fumes. :D

Best,
Grady

Mike:

Some schematics actually have small inserts at various points showing the "normal" pattern when a 'scope is used.

I never had an interest in ham radio but my Dad was very serious about his hobby. He built from scratch, receivers, transmitters, linear amps and many pieces of test equipment. He was in the military and I remember when we would move from place to place, the neighbors would come over shortly after we would be in the neighborhood (usually military housing) and tell my father that they could hear him transmitting over their electric organ or TV. Really hilarious. He would go back and change a few things and all would be OK.

He transmitted all over the world and especially during floods and other weather related events, he would set up phone patches from military personnel to families back home and would be on at all hours of the day and night talking all over the world. Used to have the wall of his radio room covered with QST cards, post cards sent after conversations with people around the world. Once he retired he bought a Yaesu transeiver and it was as big as a breadbox, prior to that his equipment was about half the size of the room he occupied. He did it until he died and got great fun and satisfaction out of the hobby. Used to drive my mother carzy He could fix anything electric.

Great memories.

I made a crystal redio that I would listen to in bed at night, pretty cool back then. That was about the extent of my expertise.

When my friends dad (retired from Northrop) was cleaning out his garage he had a Heathkit O-scope and VOM that he gave me and I still have them.

The old Heathkit and Dyanaco mono blocks have a big following in the tube amp crowd.

This subject brings to mind how important it is to transfer these skills to the next generations. We each have a little “window of opportunity” with our kids. While that is basically from conception to their current age, in this instance it starts in early grade school. Many kids (around puberty and teen-ism) tend to quit listening.

I was lucky with both of mine. My youngest could solder a circuit by age 6. About then I was given several giant IBM line printers (300# each) and he disassembled every screw. By 8 he was wiring his model RR on his own. By 10 he was using diodes, relays and transistors for the RR. I can’t recall how many 2N2222s I bought – a lot.

There were many small electronic kit projects but, unfortunately, nothing on the scale of Heathkits.

I’m a firm believer that every kid needs to grow up knowing plumbing, electrical, electronics, welding, carpentry and bits of every other trade. Of course academics are paramount, but even the PhD needs to know how to fix her car.

One of the things that really helped with this life education was Cub Scouts. We did every project from Tiger Cub to Weblos. It was worth every minute.

The age 11-16 race karts let him become a good mechanic and a professional level race car driver. (For those that don’t know, he is on sabbatical from racing until he graduates from college in ’08.)

For those Pelicans with young kids, boy or girl, tap the resource of your friends with the various skills. Everyone likes to pass on their skill.

This is what inspired me with my volunteer teaching a high end 9th grade science research class for the past 16 years.

If anyone wants project suggestions or on-line mentoring for any age kid (even 33), I’m willing.

Best,
Grady

BC348Q? If so, I had one of them too. Lots of Heathkits still functioning in my workshop. My first heathkit was a digital alarm clock (1974) that I am still using today.

Everytime I see this thread it makes me think of this...

http://www.atspeedimages.com/csrg200...hesketh_f1.jpg

Grady,

I still remember visiting my uncle's house and being amazed at his old Hallicrafters short wave receiver. He would fire the thing up (waiting for the tubes to warm up you know) and then we would sit there listening to the VOA or BBC from the Midwest part of America.

From there it just snowballed and shortly I had a 50 foot tower with a directional antenna on top. I listened to the world from there and never lost my love of anything that had sparks inside. How I climbed on top of that tower while changing antenna's and never fell off is still a good question.

It was a hell of a lot more fun for me than going out and getting into trouble (did enough of that later) and agree with you that this is something that we need to continue to pass along to the younger generation. Even when I go out on the road if I have room I carry a portable Grundig SW receiver "just in case" its needed.

Guess you never grow out of it and from those early days I realized that my being stuck in a small town in the Midwest was just not going to happen. There was a big exciting world out there and I was going to see it. It all started listening to the BBC years ago.

Joe