[Elecraft] Heath vs Elecraft

[Fred Jensen]

Rick Wheeler wrote:
> I am only 46, and as nearly everyone who owns an Elecraft product, have
> become very brand loyal to the Elecraft line. I am too young to
> remember the Heathkit era but perhaps there are some parallels of early
> Heathkit and Elecraft. Many times I read from old-timers that Elecraft
> was the vital spark that brought them back into Ham radio since
> Heathkit. Nothing since the demise of Heathkit with regards to Ham
> Radio came close.

Well, I AM old enough to remember the Heath era, here's my take.  [{n} 
refers to notes at the bottom].  In at least two respects, Heath and 
Elecraft are very similar ... they both sell radio gear as kits, and 
their offerings are inexpensive vs the other non-kit stuff out there. 
In my view however, that's about where the similarity ends.

Inexpensive was a big deal for Heath.  The Novice class in the US was 
invented in the very early 50's, it attracted a huge following of young 
new hams, many of whom were teens and few of whom had very much 
disposable income.  One of them was me, 13 at the time, and my income 
came from cutting the neighbors' grass for 25 cents a lawn [Dad insisted 
his grass be cut for free ... after all, it was his push mower.  To his 
credit, he bought me a sturdy table for my rig after I pushed it off the 
back of the card table in the excitement of my first QSO with my Elmer.]

Heath did not go for "high end performance."  They went for SOLID{1}, 
usable radios that the then ham market could afford.  And, except in 
lofty radio engineer circles, IMD, Blocking Dynamic Range, Phase Noise, 
and all the numbers we find in reviews today hadn't been invented yet. 
RX sensitivity, the number of bands covered, crystal filters [the old 
kind :-) ], stability, and the like ruled.  You wanted high performance? 
  You shelled out the cash{2} for Collins, Hallicrafters, Hammerlund, 
and those guys

There was close to an uncountable infinity of ham radio manufacturers. 
I do not remember that Heath generated "brand loyalty."  There were just 
a lot of Heathkits out there because they were more economically 
accessible than the host of other rigs that more or less did the same 
thing for more money.

The Internet and email hadn't been invented yet.  Hence, no email 
reflector like this one for support.  Actually, the computer was just 
being invented and it filled rooms with equipment.  There is a quote 
from an IBM top-guy, probably not true, that "there might be a market 
for a dozen automatic computing machines in the world."

Elecraft is quite different, and the world is quite different too.  The 
ham population has aged [quite a bit, I think], many have more economic 
means but still, for lots this remains a hobby, and not a lot of us can 
put $10K on "the card{2}" for an IC-7800.

Contrary to Heath, the Big E DOES go for performance in multiple 
dimensions.  In fact, performance means almost everything today.

Manufacturers of ham radios are now countable and nowhere near infinity. 
  It takes only the fingers of two hands, even if you're missing a thumb 
and maybe a finger.  We have Y-I-K, of course, then TT and ... hummm 
...Oh the SDR guys ... I've undoubtedly missed one or two here, but not 
many and hopefully you get the idea here.

"Radios From Aptos" come with an amazing amount of customer support and 
hand-holding, something fairly absent from the rest of the market today, 
and the Heath market many years ago.  The Internet and email DO exist 
today, and it turns out, the market for computers was a bit larger than 
predicted :-)  You have a problem with your E-radio?  Post a message and 
you get instant response, and they can and do actually talk to the those 
in Aptos.  I kept a few numbers from the reflector for a couple of days, 
and it appears that 1)  Don Wilhelm doesn't sleep;  2)  He never leaves 
his computer.  Maybe he's the Betty Crocker of Elecraft, there's more 
than one of him.  And, he's not the only one out there with help.

I have two E-radios [K2/100 + KX1] and my third is on order [wanna 
guess? :-) ].  They are my favorite radios.  I'm old enough to recognize 
and not join cults, and Elecraft users, although passionate, are not a 
cult.  We're somewhat passionate for a reason.  I had my K2 set up this 
weekend for the CQ WW RTTY, and started the TQP with my TS-850 on the 
premise, "Never make changes to your rifle in the middle of combat".  I 
did the second section of the TQP with my K2 because it heard stations I 
couldn't hear on the 850.  So much for never make changes.

So no, Elecraft is not Heath reincarnated.  Different time, different 
world, different technology, different engineering tools, different 
engineering, different market.  On a 5 hr trip down to visit my college 
roommate last spring, I began wondering what The Aptos Wonders would 
have engineered with Heath era technology.  Don't know the answer.

Just one view, I remain

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2007 CQP Oct 6-7
- www.cqp.org

Notes:
{1} SOLID:  My Heath DX100 took two men [Dad and Howard, the neighbor] 
and one medium sized boy [me] to get it into the house when the freight 
truck delivered it.

{2} CASH:  Credit cards hadn't been invented yet.  Neither had ATM's, 
direct wire transfer, PayPal, and on-line banking.  Well ... on-line 
"anything" hadn't been invented yet.

{3} I thought I noted #3 somewhere in there, but now I can't find it.