Who else started with an HAC receiver?

[Bazz4CQJ]

Originally Posted by Station X

£1.98 surely?

Oh yes...damn, they weren't such a good deal then

[David G4EBT]

Looking at a few back issues of PW Mag, an advert in Jan 1961 stated:

Quote:

"H.A.C - famous for over 25 years, were the original suppliers of short-wave receiver kits for the amateur constructor. Over 10,000 satisfied customers including Technical Colleges, Hospitals, Public Schools, Hams etc. Improved design with Denco coils: One-valve kit 25 shillings, two-valve kit 50 shillings. Super sensitive 'all-dry' complete kit 77 shillings".

End quote.

That advert infers that the kits came into being before WW2, in the late 1930s.

In retrospect those prices may seem modest, but they weren't - they were really very expensive. I recall as a fifteen year old in 1954 having just started work as an apprentice on £2.5s 0d a week that HAC kits were beyond my pocket, and the bits to make a simple one valve receiver could be got together more cheaply and they were, from the many surplus stores that then existed.

To put the kit prices into perspective, when adjusted for inflation, the one-valve kits in 1961 equates to £25 in 2014, the two valve kit £50, and the 'All-Dry £77.00. The same edition of PW carries a valve advert offering EL84s at 17 shillings each (2013 = £17.00), or a set of four B7G valves for a typical portable radio consisting of 1R5,1T4,1S5, 3S4 at 19/6d (= £20 in 2014).

A 1969 HAC ad in PW offered the one-valve 'DX' kit for 56/6d = £38.00, and in March 1976 the price for that kit was £6.00 inc VAT & P&P (£43 in 2013). The same page carries an ad by another firm for a ‘de luxe’ stereo amplifier, 4 watts per channel, using two ECL86 triode/pentodes and an EZ80 ready built and tested for £12.50 – the price of two basic one-valve HAC battery valve kits.

Don’t know when HAC stopped trading – what amazes me is how they managed to exist for so long when countless circuits for simple one, two and 3 valve receivers abounded in magazines throughout that era which could have been put together more cheaply. "10,000 satisfied customers" beggars belief! That said, for the kits to have existed over such a long period, selling in their thousands is really quite remarkable - they must have kept many people very happy, and introduced untold thousands to SWLing.

The mind play tricks when looking back to what we nostalgically (but mistakenly) believe were halcyon days of modestly priced kits and ex WD bargains, but they never really were - an R1155 for a tenner was a week's wages for a working man in the mid 1950s. I still think a five pound note is quite a high denomination of currency, but it equates to just 25 pence in 1960.


http://safalra.com/other/historical-...ce-conversion/

[Junk Box Nick]

On the face of it the kits were a lot of money for what you got but I think that the reason for the apparent success of the HAC kits was being just that. To the uninitiated a kit was almost guaranteed to work from the off.

I had my HAC kit when I was in the second year of senior school. I had tried building some simple transistor designs in Practical Wireless with limited success. A lot of the mistakes I made with published designs were so fundamental as to be laughable now but when you are starting from baseline zero the obvious isn't obvious at all.

A kit also meant that you got all the parts that were required. This was often a stumbling block with designs in books and magazines when some seemingly essential part was not available from the shop in town (once you had discovered that such an emporium existed after taking a list of parts to the local telly repair shop and getting a bemused look from the uninterested proprietor).

The HAC was the first receiver I had that worked on short wave and could receive amateur transmissions and I had hours of fun with it. It opened up a whole new world.

[Radio Wrangler]

I think you've just made or lost half a p, Graham, depending on whether you bought or sold the 19 set... People were very concerned over 'rounding' at the time.

I saw the HAC adverts and avoided them. I'd had a nasty loss of pocket money over a Lasky's Skyrover and I didn't fancy the risk. So I was completely dedicated to raising the cash for an AR88. I think single-handedly this kid made our village a no-go area for the TV repair trade.

David

[Station X]

I think many of us decided to get amateur radio licences after listening on the HF bands using a domestic receiver with short wave or an HAC type kit.

Alas with the demise of AM on the amateur bands this route in is no longer open.

[Bazz4CQJ]

Originally Posted by Junk Box Nick

To the uninitiated a kit was almost guaranteed to work from the off. I had my HAC kit when I was in the second year of senior school. I had tried building some simple transistor designs in Practical Wireless with limited success.

Yes, I think that might be dead right. A really well established kit must have been the most bomb-proof way of making a start. My first foray was a 2-transistor design from a mag, spending ages finding the parts and it never produced so much as a crackle . I was sold a "ferrite rod", which has long since disappeared, but in later years I became sure that it looked like ferrite but was much too lightweight. Years later, I got a Saturday job working for the chap who sold it to me and he was totally unscruplous, advertising marked transistors by mail order and actually supplying unmarked items of no known specification. I saw a pile of the orders that came in and many looked like they came from kids.

[echelon]

I certainly did have an HAC One Valve kit, as my main initiation to proper DX, for all the component-inclusivity reasons stated above, especially coils, which for me were the ultimate in unobtainium. Having Mr Denco's mysterious little green chess pieces sent to me, 'ready rolled' was the answer to a misunderstood prayer.

My next graduation point was on to a Heathkit SW-717. Now that was an education. If the HAC was a grounding in the world of anode caps, the 717 was an introduction to the Middle Earth of how to be almost electrocuted with the aid of inexact instructions. Ah, happy days! Many an electron has flowed since then (and pound flown, too...bidirectionally, of course)

[Keith]

Originally Posted by Station X

Alas with the demise of AM on the amateur bands this route in is no longer open.

The "death" of amateur AM is greatly exaggerated! The mode is alive and well in the UK on 80m (3615) and 60m (5317). The former is in use every morning between ~07:30 and 08:30. I have a list of 40+ stations who turn up more or less regularly on the net (all AM signals are welcome). It is also home to the VMARS AM net every Saturday morning starting at 08:30 which can have up to 25 participants. Additionally, over the last sunspot cycle peak, there was a lot of AM activitity between the UK and Stateside on 29-29.1MHz.

One or two of these stations regularly use homebrewed TRF receivers which apparently give a very good account of themselves on both AM and SSB.

[Station X]

Perhaps I should have said decline rather than demise.

I am a regular listener to 3615, but for most of the time it is silent barring noise at S7. In the early 1960's a casual listener on the short wave bands would find any number of AM stations to listen to on 160, 80 and 40 metres. Nowadays all he or she will hear is the Donald Duck noise of SSB.