alan@adept.uucp (Alan Ruffer) (02/06/91)
In article <16686@accuvax.nwu.edu> jshelton@ads.com (John L. Shelton) writes: X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 93, Message 3 of 10 ....text deleted regarding Allied Radio and Radio Shack. >[Moderator's Note: You are wrong on the 'Allied was mail order only' >Anerica. Say! Speaking of Heathkit ... what are *they* doing these >days? Are they still around? My first terminal was a Zenith Z-19 >which I built from a Heathkit in 1980, meaning it was actually an H-19 >instead. The last I heard, they closed the Benton Harbor facility. PAT] Heathkit IS still alive and well. They were bought by Zenith primarily because of their educational courses and computer systems. A good friend of mine was a technical consultant at the time this occurred. During the resulting streamlining process he and many others lost their jobs. I still get catalogs from them, though the last few times I attempted an order, I always wound up with a refund for this or that because it had been "discontinued". Heath is more into selling "assembled" products these days, for instance their amateur radio equipment is Yeasu with Heaths name plate on it, much as Sears does with their "Kenmore" products. They still sell a few kits. The quality of the construction manuals has declined however. By the way I have a vintage H-19 terminal serving STILL as console to this Unix box! Those things were huge as you know, but they are cement mixers! It was old already when I bought it used, then I put it thru hundreds of on-off cycles, and finally the last four years its been running 24 hours a day. On an unrelated subject I have two questions: Does anyone know when South Central Bell will be adding caller-ID to the 318 area? How much a month is the typical bill for service in areas that already have this feature? Alan R. Ruffer UUCP: {csccat,chinacat!holston}!adept!alan Route 1, Box 1745 Amateur Radio Station WB5FKH Sulphur, LA 70663 BBS: (318) 527-6667, 19200(PEP)/9600(V.32)/2400/1200 [Moderator's Note: Many years ago we used to drive over to Benton Harbor on Saturday to visit the Heathkit surplus outlet store. Talk about some steals! Returned kits, merchandise with slight defects, it was all put out at 70% off retail price. Those were the days! Bell of Illinois has indicated Caller*ID will cost about $6 per month when they begin offering it later this year. Of course, you have to buy the display box from whomever ... figure about $70-100 for that. PAT]
Allyn@uunet.uu.net (02/07/91)
I believe Heathkit is a strictly mail order business now. I have a feeling that it will not last very much longer.... Allyn Lai allyn@cup.portal.com
dave@westmark.westmark.com (Dave Levenson) (02/07/91)
In article <16709@accuvax.nwu.edu>, Ed_Greenberg@3mail.3com.com writes: > Many people recently got a Heathkit catalog. I think that the mailing ... > It was pitiful. About 30% of the stuff in the catalog was buildable. > The rest was sold assembled-only. The ham gear line has been > decimated, the stereo/television line is about gone, and their concept > of building a computer is to plug the boards in. I'm sure there are other factors, but one thing that happened to Heathkit was FCC part 15. I got to know Heath as a kid back in the 50's. In those days, if it wasn't a transmitter, no FCC certification was required. As a result, you could assemble a Heathkit table radio, or a shortwave receiver, and it was legal. Today, it has to be FCC type-accepted, and that means it has to be assembled by an FCC-approved factory, etc. About all you could do now is ship the RF parts pre-assembled and build the case around it. The market for kit-built electronics is pretty much limited to amateur radio (still legal for home-builts) and audio equipment with no RF-radiating ability. I have built a dozen or so Heathkits, ranging from a shortwave receiver (remember the AR-3?) to an electronic air filter for a domestic central HVAC system. I still have the IM-11 vacuum tube voltmeter, but the FET-VOM from Radio Shack is less expensive, more accurate, and more user-friendly. Dave Levenson Internet: dave@westmark.com Westmark, Inc. UUCP: {uunet | rutgers | att}!westmark!dave Warren, NJ, USA AT&T Mail: !westmark!dave Voice: 908 647 0900 Fax: 908 647 6857 [Moderator's Note: When I was in 5th grade or somewhere back in that era a buddy and I tried to build a Heathkit table radio. I think it had three or four tubes in it. Somehow we accidentally wired it up wrong and sent the wire which carried the IF (intermediate frequency at 440 kc) out the antenna. Although the radio would not play, we soon discovered it would radiate all over the house. With that in mind, we attached another 80 feet or so of wire to make a quarter-wave antenna at 1620 kc's and played 'radio station' for everyone within a three block range of my house. We re-broadcast Muzak from an SCA receiver my buddy had found at a junk dealer and the time signal from Boulder, CO at 15 megs. My parents found out a couple days later, raised cain and the 'radio station' signed off the air for good. PAT]