Show Me Your Heathkit!

guido

Well-known Member
Hello,

My only survivor is the tune-up meter with induction R.P.M's pick up. High tech then!


Guido.
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Haha I did that one . I think it got ruined by water. My Heathkit receiver lasted from 1972 until about 1998 ,after that the capacitors dried out. I wish those Heathkit stores were still around. That was good fun for a kid and the instructions were fool proof.
 
I had some of that stuff way way back when. But my 2nd wife made sure stuff like that disappeared so she could buy her self some beer. Lost man ya book on electronics and many a tool. Oh well that was decades ago and she is dead now
 
I did an oscilloscope decades ago when was living in a tent and a shelter on the back of a 5-ton while stationed in Germany, but it didn't work so good and never made it back from Germany. Come to think of it, I'm not sure that it even made it out of the mud. I was radio and mux repair down to the component on the card or in the module and liked the four channel scopes that the Army gave us to use and wanted to build my own. Repair I could do well. Build from scratch, not so well apparently.

Mark
 

I started with a HW16 crystal morse code transceiver... then the volt ohm meter, then the electronic keyer, then the swr/power meter, then a sb102 SSB transceiver, then the sb220 amplifier, then the 2 meter crystal transceiver

I loved that stuff and it performed perfectly... still have the swr meter, the world time clock and the volt ohm meter... good times a long time ago.

john
 
Hello Mark-IN,

Closest I came to electronics was the LVCT tester.Furth Nurenburg Germany 1968-69. 63C20 wheel mechanic,

Guido.
 
Hello jniolon,

Yep it was many moons ago. I did have a short wave 32mc receiver, with long wave and AM. Could not get
the resonance out of the tuner. So I sold it. Thinking back though it was all metal construction, may be
just isolating grommets would have worked?

Guido.
 
MANY years ago I was teaching in a small Christian school in East Tennessee. Someone gave us an oscilloscope kit. I had been a Communications Technician in the Navy, so I used the kit to teach a basic electronics course to the High School students in the school. We had a great time building the kit together. I moved away and have no idea if the scope was ever used after that.

I also built a hi-fi amplifier for an old turn table that I had. I don't think that kit was a Heathkit, but whatever it was, it worked great. Discrete components and vacuum tubes I dig. Anything after that is a mystery to me.

Tom in TN
 
I have a tube tester, signal tracer with audio and a resistance / capacitor tester. THey belonged to my uncle and date back to the early fifties. Wouldn't mind selling them as I don't really use them.
 
A competitor of Heathkit was Knight Kit by Allied Radio. I worked for Knight Kit in Maywood IL in the early 60's My job was to fix / repair the kits that the customers screwed up. I had a quota to make and I could tell which ones would be difficult by reading the name on the work order. If the customer was a doctor, lawyer or high ranking military official, I knew it would be difficult because these people are not used to following instruction. The easy ones were from Privates in the military. Just my observations.
 
I built a VTVM from one of their kits in 1973 and later added the high voltage probe for tv work. Kept them a few years and finally sold them. Still worked good but no longer needed it. I preferred testing the high voltage with a meter unlike one guy in my electronics class that would just let it arc to his finger. Sid.
 
The SB-102 and SB-220 was my "Dream Combo" when I was in high school. No way could I have ever afforded to own them. There was just something about the whole Heathkit "SB line". I had a friend who had the SB-301/SB-401 combo and it was a pleasure to operate.
 
Guido,
Back in my younger days I had an interest in electronics, so I took a correspondence course from National Radio Institute. Put together an EVOM, radio, oscilloscope, color bar generator to align Pic tube and a solid state color TV. Shortly after that Zenith, the last US company to make TV's, went out of business. TV's were imported at a lower price and it was no longer profitable to repair TV's. They became a disposal item. Electronics parts store in town closed after 50 years.
Geo
 
Hello Geo-TH,In,

The kit building guide is copywrited 1965. Got the electronic bug working for Litcom, a division of litton industries. Military voice communication systems was mostly my end of the work. I worked in logistics, in the provisioning department. Big title for equipment support,


Guido.
 
Both watt/swr meters, hf and two meters, a cantenna dummy load, still in the station.. did have several of the capacitive discharge automotive ignition systems that worked well before electronic ignitions. an racing tachometer, still have the tune up meters and an exhaust analyzer meter. Really enjoyed the kits and miss them. May still have the color bar gen and capacitor tester in the barn..
 
Hello Scott- in-Idaho,

Man that thing brings back memories. It joggled my brain big time!😂 My brother in law had one of those. His had a B&S though. What engine did that one have? Does not look like B&S,

Guido.
 
I still have the inductive pickup kit tachometer. It is set up for 2 cycle engines, but have the stuff to change it to 4 cycle.Still have the assembly manual also that you checked off the steps as you completed them. I had the capacitor discharge ignition on a Corvair, but forgot to take it off when I sold it and it was gone by the time I remembered it. My father in law built the TV and it lasted for about 20 years before going kaput.
 
Hello Gene Davis (GA.),

Mine has a switch to toggle from two to four cycles. If you look at the meter it is on the bottom center of the meter,

Guido
 
Hello Mel in SW Iowa,

Yep. Had four helpers in my group fresh out of wheel school. I was fresh out of AIT. I was the lead mechanic, they carried the heavy loads. I also ran the tool room at the end of my tour........


Guido.
 
Scott-in-Idaho:

I got one of them, or what's left of it anyway. Just the frame now and a 5 HP Briggs & Stratton. :>(

Doc
 
Guido:

I built a couple of the Heathkit Multi-Band Receivers, VOM, DC Power Supply, Tube Tester, Crystal Radio Set, and several others that I can't remember right now. Traded the first Multi-Band Receiver for a Learavian Portable Multi-Band Receiver with a built in PA system, - took the old 57 1/2 volt Dry Cell "B" Battery. My second Multi-Band Receiver along with all my other Electronics stuff, 5 large boxes of Vacuum Tubes, and a late 1950's Black & White TV that I built, are all out in a storage shed. Also have a couple of old Hallicrafters Multi-Band tube sets that I occasionally listen to.

Doc :>)
 
Hello Dr. Walt,


I had the 32mc receiver with long wave and am. It had a resonance I did not know were it came from. Possibly because the tuner was reflecting or absorbing radio waves from the all metal box? I sold that thing....

Guido.
 
When young I would drool over the Heathkit catalog though I never had a Heathkit.

I did assemble a Knight Kit (Allied Radio) three tube amplifier/broadcaster when in the 7th or 8th grade. I could transmit on the AM band and sometimes created quite a stir as I often hooked it to my 100' crystal radio antenna rather than the 10' antenna as intended. When so connected, one could receive it up to a mile or so and it was just about all you could receive if within a block or two.

Dean
 
I remember an electronics parts store in Terre Haute that I occasionally visited while attending ISU. It was just south of campus in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Ohio Avenue, maybe?

Sure wish that I had one of the Simpsom VOMs that we used in the electronics lab. Of course, at the time, none of us wanted to use the Simipsons because we all wanted to use one of the new fangled Fluke DVMs.

Dean
 
Hello,

I had to make up a battery supply for the meter. The holder and the batteries looked ugly! I looked at the manual and it needs 4.7 volts input. I just recycled 4 Lithium batteries and hooked them in parallel, and it works just fine. Plenty of adjustment for the ohm range, and with a 2k OHMS the scale point at 2K. The volt meter works, as well as the continuity light. Only thing left now is the R.P.M's function. I took a couple of pictures while I had it apart.......................................I'm Happy!

Guido
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Just saw your post after posting above about a Knight Kit that I assembled in the seventh or eight grade.

It was a three tube amplifier/broadcaster that I saved my money and bought mail order from Allied Radio.

This was back in the day of terminal strips and soldered circuits. The only soldering iron that I had was my father's 250 watt but I managed.

About half way through, I read in the directions to place a 1" piece of spaghetti over a certain wire. After pondering this for awhile and looking at the assembly, I determined that it was intended as insulation but certainly the directions were incorrect as spaghetti has no hole inside for the wire. Thinking that whoever wrote the directions obviously meant macaroni, I went into the pantry to get some.

Quite proud of myself for discovering this obvious error, I showed the directions to my father. Patient as Job, he followed me back to the work bench in the basement to explain to me that "spaghetti" was a term of art used to describe the braided insulation included in the kit. I'm sure that he had quite a chuckle but he said not a word.

Dean
 
Yes Dean it is. It still works after 27 years that I've owned this house. We have another in the basement as I would not trust it with our lives. I bought our house from a neighbor, I grew up 2 doors away. He worked for Ma Bell and fiddled with electronics. His Xmas display was light years ahead of its time with music timed to lights and motion caricatures. Incredible actually for 40-45 years ago.
 
Hello Dean,


It is good for a chuckle now! My spagetti get sauce on them,

Guido.
 
There may have been more than one electronics store back in the day of repairing things. I liked going to Midwest Electronics, North of campus on Lafayette Ave. They have been gone for a long time, at least 20+ years. It was a very busy place. Now the building is a thrift store.
 
Well I was moonlighting in a TV shop when RCA was king....mid to late '60's. Converging the old longnecks was a bear. I have an LED today and every single time I turn it on, I marvel at the color quality.....breathtaking, no red or blue or green trimmed white collars......without having to converge, red rasters ("rare earth phosphors"...RCA original) perfectly solid red without having to degauss every time the Mrs. vacuum cleaner went buy or you moved the thing from the N wall to the E wall when she had to rearrange things.

Kids today have absolutely no idea what's in their hand when they are "locked on" to that habit forming anti-social thing in their hand. Just isn't fair!
 
We used Simpsons at work till the calibration lab quit calibrating them. What we were doing required an analog meter movement and after twisting management's arm.....they wanted stuff out the door so they gave in, we got to keep our Simpsons and our Flukes.
 
Back in the day, I was told that an engineering intern at Heathkit was handed a box of parts and management told him to build something useful out of it. Any truth to that?
 
I remember spending some time going through my mother's box of "elbow" macaroni looking for a somewhat straight section of macaroni as the wire was mostly straight and not long enough to add a curve.

I also remember that it was difficult keeping the macaroni from catching on fire when attempting to solder the wire to the terminal strip with my father's 250 watt iron.

Dean
 
Hello Texasmark1,

Love my led head band light! Rare earth what? The now generation does not have a clue. Degaussing would be Greek to them. They sure feel powerful with that thing in their hand. I still have many pc components. To day's pc is another animal,

Guido.
 
I still have a Texas Instruments 99 something (forgot) made back when they were thinking about getting into the race. Hang on to your skivvies: 200 KILObit Ram!!!!!!!!!!! On the ones since, piles of 'em in the shed, closets, under the tables. I am running an IMAC with El Capitan Safari now. Bought it in 2005 when I retired and love it. Apple keeps the software updated for free and it's automatic.
 

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