[Elecraft] Re: Elecraft Digest, Vol 41, Issue 51

[n2ey at aol.com]

---Original Message-----
From: Brett gazdzinski <brett.gazdzinski at verizonbusiness.com>

>In my book, comparing elecraft to heathkit is a bad idea.

I disagree!

>I think Heathkit built stuff with price way to much in mind, and often 
used
>poor or very odd designs to save money and reduce kit price.

Having built or extensively worked on the HW-101, DX-20, DX-100, VF-1,
AR-2, QF-1, V-4, V-7, TC-1, GD-1, HP-23, HP-13, SB line, HW-2036 and 
more,
I say Heath *sometimes* used unusual designs, mostly in the early days.

>The DX100 was full of compromises to cost, with weird power supply
>setups, very small driver transformer, 1625 tubes instead of 807's,
>a rickety vfo, etc."

There was nothing 'weird' about the power supply setup of the DX-100.
It was very conventional for the time. The driver transformer was small 
because
they were trying to limit the frequency range of the rig. 1625s are 
simply
the 12 volt version of the 807; they were all over the place back then 
at
incredibly low prices. The VFO was simply the guts of a VF-1.

The DX-100 was Heath's version of the Johnson Viking 2/122 VFO combo,
built into a single box. Compare the schematics and see how similar they
are. To compete with EFJ, Heath had to offer a significantly lower 
price,
and the only way to do that was to replace high cost parts with less
expensive ones, because the Viking 2 was available as a kit.

>The HW101 used a poor filter at 9 MHz? and some really odd rare tubes.

The HW-101 IF filter is at 3.395 MHz. It was no worse than many filters
of the day.

None of the tubes in an HW-101 were rare when the rig was designed.
They were all current-production, and using the types they did improved
performance and reduced cost. All of them can still be found with a 
little
looking.

It should be remembered that the HW-101 originally sold for $250, which
was an incredibly low price for the time. Consider just the cost of the 
tubes,
(more than a dozen, including two 6146s), the xtal filter (a prefab 
unit custom
made for Heath) and the 12 heterodyne, carrier and calibrator crystals
(also custom made)  and it's a wonder they could keep the price so low.

>Power supplies were always very marginal.

Not in my experience! The only marginal power supplies in Heath ham gear
I know of were in the DX-35/DX-40. There was a cure for that, too.

>I can understand the HW7 was a very low cost direct conversion rig, 
but even
>then, they could have made the design better for little or no 
additional
>cost.

How?

When looking at old rigs, the realities of their times must be 
remembered. Adding
a few dollars in parts to a kit meant adding several dollars to the 
price, which
cut hard into sales. When you look at prices from the old days, run 
them through
an inflation-adjuster to see what they translate to in 2007 money.

The amateur market then was much smaller than today, because there were 
far
  fewer hams, more homebrewing and surplus, and the cost was so much 
higher.

Sure, Heath made some clunkers. Any company that put out so many 
products
and lines so fast and with so much attention to cost could have the 
same problem.
But before labeling a rig as a clunker, consider its times, not today's 
standards.

No mention of Heath ham gear would be complete without tribute to the
HW-16, a work of genius if there ever was one.

Try actually building a rig to compete with the old Heathkit designs, 
using
only parts and techniques available then, and using prices from those 
days.

>Elecraft on the other hand always seems to well exceed the sum of its 
parts,
>they take very basic circuits, computer control them, and get fantastic
>performance out of them.

>Looking at the diagrams, there is not THAT much difference between
>the sierra,
> the KX1, K1, and K2, at least in the analog part. Single conversion, 
xtal
>filter,
>the differences seem to be more in the computer control...
>The sierra was actually more complex with its IF amp chip...

The true radio performance (dynamic range, sensitivity) comes mostly 
from
"the analog part". The features come from the controllers, except for 
things
like the truly elegant VCO system. Schematics alone do not tell the 
whole
story of any rig.

>While heathkit stuff always worked, it was usually a poor performer 
and had
>loads of improvements that could be done to it.
>That was part of the fun I suppose....

In my experience, Heath gear performed well, compared to the 
competition.
Of course an SB-line was not as good as an S-line, but when a complete 
SB-line
setup cost less than an S-line receiver, that shouldn't be a surprise.

> -----Original Message-----
> [mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Rick Wheeler

> Perhaps someone more familiar with the history of Heathkit could draw
> some similarities?

One big similarity is the "hands on" approach. With kits, a ham had at 
least
some idea what was inside the box, and a sporting chance of fixing it if
something went wrong. There's also the experience of using something
you actually built, which simply cannot be had any other way.

For Heath, cost was a big draw as well. Look up what the average person
earned 40-50 years ago, and then look at rig prices in terms of "hours 
of
work to own".

> I would be most interested to know what
> many thought
> was the reason for the end of Heathkit with regards to Ham Radio.

IMHO it was technological change coupled with competition from Japanese 
rigs.

Before the widespread use of automation in electronics manufacture, a
significant part of the cost of anything electronic was manufacturing 
labor.
Heath and other kitmakers saved money by eliminatiing most of that. The
limiting factor was the need to produce detailed assembly manuals, and 
to
come up with designs that could be built, aligned and tested without too
much in the way of specialized tools, jigs and test equipment.

With point-to-point wiring and bolted-in components, there's a lot of 
labor,
so lots of possible savings. Just look at a DX-100. The change to 
printed
circuit boards reduced a lot of the labor to board-stuffing, but it was 
still
significant until that process was automated. See HW-101.

The final blow was the success of imported manufactured rigs at
competitive prices. Why build a Heathkit when you could get a Yaecomwood
with more features for less money?

Heath actually outlasted many other US ham gear
makers (National, Hallicrafters, Hammarlund, SBE/Gonset, EFJohnson, 
etc.)

What Elecraft did was to play a different game. They saw a part of the
market that wasn't being addressed, and met the need. They purposely
abandoned some of the standard paradigms of the past 20-30 years of HF
 ham rigs, and made a lot of hams happy in the process.


73 de Jim, N2EY


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