Yes, there was a Heathkit store on 7200 South just east of I-15. I saw a gentleman take a 3.5 watt HW-8, CW only rig and pound out Morse code to someone on the other end. I found out it was Japan. Wow, Japan on just a few watts and a wire antenna. I was hooked and I visited that store every chance I got. Not cheap stuff as you said Mike, but fun to build and if you weren't careful you could learn something while you were soldering it up. This stuff gave me confidence later on to build things like LED finder "scopes" and such. If I couldn't afford something, I would borrow a manual from a friend of mine and just read about the circuit and how they hooked it all up. Heathkit documentation wasn't bad. I think that I still have a logic probe manual in my junk pile somewhere. I hope Bob doesn't miss it too much... B) 73 de n7zi Gary "Why buy something for ten bucks when you can make it for a hundred." JR ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Carnes" <MichaelCarnes@earthlink.net> To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2005 8:59 PM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Quote of the Day
It's just more fun to build stuff yourself although not often cheaper... B)
Anybody remember Heathkit? They used to sell well-documented kits for all sorts of electronics. You could often save a bundle on various types of gear by spending a few nights with a kit. Back around 1980 or so, I built a VT-52 compatible computer monitor and the kit cost me ONLY $900. Heath even had a kit to build a PDP-11/01 computer. Pretty serious hardware. Boy did I drool over that one. Most of their stuff was radios, audio gear and such. But when the Japanese perfected high-quality mass production, the finished goods cost substantially less than the kits. Bye bye Heathkit. Pity.