The return of Heathkit?

[The Other Mike]

Can't see any point in them starting up again. They were always expensive, the only way they can make them cheap is to outsource to China and you'd be better off buying a complete working bit of kit than a box of bits.

It also probably needs two dollars to the pound and an honest translation of prices for them to make any impact here and that is ignoring the fact that wherever you live in the world you can buy extremely competent ready built test kit and RF gear from the Japs and Chinese (you can also end up with crap too!)

If you need a gadget then someone has already produced one and sells it delivered to your door often for less than the cost of just the return bus fare or car parking for a commuter into a major city.

If someone hasn't made a gadget then you don't bother or you roll your own from discretes, a PIC, an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I got used to buttons 30 years ago..

[Frank Erskine]

I rarely dial v. long numbers, but yes, I use several of them regularly. Star and hash can be a bit problematical so I also have a DECT phone... The switchboard doesn't get much use since there's only me in the house.

[Davey]

Nor I. I do have a 1970s dial 'phone available, in case of need, such as a power cut.

[Frank Erskine]

But for many people _the_ enjoyment is in actually constructing stuff and getting it working - indeed modifying/improving it.

I've had an amateur radio licence for decades but have no interest in bread puddings or the weather in wherever. I'm only interested in the technical aspects of equipment and maybe propagation.

[Davey]

I was living in the US when the IBM PC became available. Heathkit's version was a lot cheaper, and could have a whopping 702K of RAM, which the IBM could not, offering only 640K. 'Cheap' was of course a relative term, I shudder to think what that money would buy me now. The PC itself was stretched to the limit, eventually having a 386 processor installed (remember them?). It is now in the great computer graveyard in the sky. My first PC was a Sinclair ZX-81, still stashed in a box somewhere.... but it needs an NTSC TV to connect to. If I wanted to, of course, and that is not high on my priority list; the 'high' there is optional.

[Graham.]

The first cordless phone I saw had a little rotary dial. Someone has brought it over from the USA.

[Graham.]

The Tony Hancock character of 1961 bought his station for £500

values it at £9,439.20 at today's prices.

[Bob Eager]

No wonder he could afford to ship bread pudding to Belgrade.

[John Rumm]

lots of modern TVs will display NTSC composite video (not always in colour, but that is not going to be a problem with the ZX81)

[John Rumm]

Same argument applies to making furniture and many DIY tasks... does not seem to stop us.

[Road_Hog]

Doomed from the start. It will be heavily over priced. Gone are the days of the '70s where you could save a feq quid by putting a kit together yourself.

I've recently got back into electronics and I'm shocked by some of the prices companies are trying to charge for kits. I've been looking around at SW radio kits and they're basically taking the piss.

This one for example, best part of a hundred quid for a basic regen radio. The case probably costs a pound or two from China, resistors cost a penny when bought in bulk, capacitors a few pennies and transistors under a pound. A fair price would be 30.

Needless to say that the same radio costs less than 60 (even when you've added 20% VAT on) in the States.

[Peter Percival]

Do such things communicate with modern exchanges?

[Peter Percival]

Only after I'd completed their survey did I wonder why this (supposed) company was so insubstantial. Who are the directors? Where are its offices? (By the latter I mean "where is it headquartered". Yuk.)

[Brian Gaff]

I built the old Mohican receiver, but it was let down by its wobbly front panel that made it unstable when tuning. amazing how well the actual design worked for its germanium transistors, but oh, what a crap ssb resolution system, no product detector.

I also built other shortwave radios of theirs for other people which generally worked well but flimsy plasstic bits did tend to let them down. Expensive at times, certainly, nowadays you can see the way the winds blew, as low cost manufacturer of the same basic designs were cheaper than thekits, and probably still will be. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

MFJ, is that made From Junk?

Brian

[meow2222]

Yes, the change in phone standards since the 40s is the shift from pulse dial to tone dialling, and plenty of exchanges still support pulse. For any that dont, you can use a remote/pocket dialler held up to the mic, or dial on another phone.

I forget the REN value of old phones, its too long ago. But it doesnt much matter.

NT

[Tim Lamb]

+1 although my wife does have a Kindle. >

[Tim Watts]

On Monday 17 June 2013 21:14 polygonum wrote in uk.d-i-y:

They were OK when they were invented:

"S. Barden: High Class Meat Purveyor - Phone [Robertsbridge] 33"

:)

[Tim Watts]

On Monday 17 June 2013 22:14 The Other Mike wrote in uk.d-i-y:

You're all missing the point - these were kits for fun and education, with a final purpose. You're all saying the kit was just for the purpose of an end product, in which case you're right. But if you consider the kit was a neat little pile of bits and a nice case and you could have fun putting it together and then end up with a nice/useful product - then they were brilliant on the whole.