[Elecraft] Heathkit Returns!

Grant Youngman nq5t at tx.rr.com
Thu Sep 8 21:14:31 EDT 2011


It's probably a little bit disingenuous to bash the late 50's Heathkit products too hard.  Generally, the stuff was a good value, worked (some better than others of course), and was certainly no worse than most other comparable products of the time.  I had a friend who got a set of St. James Grey gear as a 14th birthday present, but sadly, I was forced to have my fun with the "awful" Heathkit stuff.  And I did have fun, thank you ..

I wonder how many thousands of VF-1s were sold?  Judging by their ready availability still, I'd hazard it was the most common VFO of the era.  Most of us who built/used one managed not to attract the attention of OOs or the FCC as a result :-)

Grant/NQ5T

On Sep 8, 2011, at 7:14 PM, Phillip Shepard wrote:

> I will second that.  My Novice receiver was an HR-10B that I
> built; and that was OK, but not great.  Memories ...
> 
> 
>> In the 1950s, the Heathkit AT-1 and AR-3 were pure junk. Yes, the prices
>> were low, but the design quality was awful. The DX-20, DX-35 and DX-40
>> were just okay but the VF-1 was trash. The DX-100 and DX-100B were okay if
>> you were "rock bound," but if you used the VFO - it was a VF-1 - and it
>> was terrible on CW and drifty on AM.


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