Heathkit Closes

Bummer !

I loved those kits from back in the 70's.
In fact the weather station on my roof is a heathkit .

Too bad. Another tragic tale of our times .... probably bottom-line-itis. My first CB transceiver was a Heathkit. I also built amplifiers, receivers, and other stuff from Heathkit.

Wish I was wealthy enough to pick up their stock and rebuild the company. Actually, it should be possible ... for some coalition of small investors, those interested in keeping it alive, even if it doesn't bear big profits.

I have room air filters made by them still working. heath RIP.

Cmon folks. This really is a surprise? I mean look around and examine what's been going on over the last couple of decades.

The slow removal of industrial education in schools. The slow degradation of morals and dignity within the home. Interests beyond the slapfacebook and text'ing is no longer relevant.

All of this really started to dwindle down in the 80's during Regan's era, after that it just went snowballing down hill from there.

The generations today are nothing like what they were before. There is more interest in sending up to the minute updates on one's daily routine being published for the world to see yet scream and shout privacy at the same time. Are any of these types going to have an interest in putting together some radio or tv kit when it can simply be bought off the wally world shelf and support outsourced industry?!

The idea to revive the kit company sounds great..problem is..it wont work in this current time because there is simply not a market for it anymore.

Shame.

RFB

Cmon folks. This really is a surprise? I mean look around and examine what's been going on over the last couple of decades.

I know. But I don't have to like it!

Electronic products now are made to be tossed, because they are too micro-mini to be repaired, except by a quantum physicist.

I saw this slowly coming starting with transistors, then IC chips, then itsy-bitsy IC chips, and now equipment so small that it can be lost in a 6X6 empty room.

Heathkit actually made a computer kit. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a computer that was servicable by a home technician?

They had a color TV kit. Wow.

Thank the gracious spectral space for kit makers like PhilB and the Ramsey FM devices.

And we dream of electron tubes.

Heathkit may be gone but there are still plenty of kits out there.

Last year I built the MFJ Cub transceiver. You guys have built the SSTRAN transmitters. Granted not quite as diverse as once upon a time, there's stuff out there.

Then there's the ole DIY home brew stuff.

The name Heathkit is also a main character in the 1847 novel by Emily Bronte titled "Wuthering Heights," about the doomed love between Heathkit and Catherine Earnshaw, which brought down everything around them.

Things were especially serious in the story because there was no radio to keep them sane.

It is also famous from the Red Skelton skit where the two seagulls, Gertrude and Heathkit, would converse.

Neil

I have two Heathkit DX-60 transmitters
(actually a DX-60A abd a DX-60B. The
DX-60B doesn't work, but the "A" model
works great. I had it on the air a couple
of months ago.

I also have an HR-10B ham receiver and
a GR-81 regen receiver (I love that thing.)

It is very sad about Heathkit. I was hoping
they would make another go at it.

There are quite a few kit manufacturers out
there, though.

In the early 1970s, my Dad built a Heathkit
color TV. It worked on the first try, but he
had to do a lot of tweaking of the individual
stages to get the picture right. The TV had it's
own internal video test generator, which made
things easier. I was very proud of him for
doing that.

Bruce,, DRS2

A thought occurred to me that maybe the perceived lack of interest in electronics as a hobby and the parts stores, magazines, and kit sellers that supported this diminishing activity may be a return to normal rather than a decline. From my memory, electronics was popular from the 1950s through perhaps the 1980s (an arbitrary choice). Consider that WWII was a positive stimulus with both the number of servicemen who were trained in electronics coming home and the huge amount of post war surplus equipment and manufacturers' component stocks that was available. Add to this the newly rolled out TV and HiFi in the '50s and the strength of radio broadcasting then it is easy to picture how many would be drawn to the allure of do it yourself electronics.

In 1957, Sputnik was another positive kick for the hobby because it was a kick in the pants for Uncle Sam to do something in response. Schools and Colleges were funded for and were promoting science and engineering and even I benefited with a scholarship/assistantship in engineering funded by the National Science Foundation. For many years Science Fair projects in electronics were a plurality. Today, Science Fair projects are mainly about the environment and dreamy green stuff.

So, maybe in the history of things the '50s through the '80s might have been the "sunspot peak" for hobby electronics and we are just returning to a normal state.

Neil

Neil's ideas make me think of some additional things, based on the concept that we are "returning to a normal state."

That swing could carry through to a resurgence of interest in electronic discovery.

It would be unfair not to notice that a whole generation just went through a period of learning how to plug stuff together to build computers with plugin cards, memory chips, added harddrives, etc. That certainly is a more blunt way of building devices than the more detailed process of kit building, but it's something.

I just heard of a new $25 basic computer that's catching on known as "Rasberry Pie," which is almost like the days of the VIC 20, where whole systems are built from a central CPU. It was mentioned on the radio show "HAM Nation."

Maybe the part 15 movement is at the beginning of a whole new age, and not at the end of an old one.

After hours at work, a UHA student helped
me work on the "13.560 MHz Big Talker." He got a real
kick out of what the different RF stages were
supposed to do, and he thought the parts
were neat. He helped me solder the buffer
stage. This was fairly recently. All the parts are
on the final amp board now. We'll be going
to the next step of soldering that as soon as
I can get the time. But the point is that this kid
was sincerely interested.

Other students have enjoyed listening to the
International Space Station on my 2 meter HT.

All the kids that come to my house love my
records and turntables.

The kid across the street is going into Electrical
Engineering in college.

Yes, we had a big peak in interest decades ago,
but I think some
people are still interested. Science is going to
benefit greatly when the space tourism race gets
going. There are now 8 spaceports being built in
the U.S. We may see a whole revival in the interest
in engineering. And that will hopefully include
electronics, if the interest in science goes back up.

Well, I guess we'll see what happens.

Bruce, DRS2

Hey Bruce, the news of "space tourism" and numerous "spaceports" is very astounding!

I knew that cruise ships were ushering tours to the Antarctic, which I thought was somewhat edgy, but space tourism? Holy lift off.

Are there restaurants in space?

Shopping opportunities?

What's up there besides a giant empty vacuum?