How many here built kits in the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's? :?: :mrgreen:

[Smithdoor]

I agree.
I just finished one myself I put schematic on this site for others to build. ( TransistorVTVM).
It more fun to build from scratch after you learn how to.
It help in what did most of life . Manufacturering kits for aircraft hangar doors.

I do believe kits help me back in the 1960's to get this point.

Dave

[Terry_VK5TM]

No kits here either unless you count a 2M FM Transceiver designed by the local radio club in the late 60's.

Otherwise everything from valve amps and transmitters (ham band) through to various bits of semiconductor audio and test equipment stuff.

If I count right, only ever built 4 kits since about 1995, although I have produced quite a few for sale to others.

[radiomobile]

In the mid 1950's I bought a "kit" of parts from a Wireless World advertiser calling themselves Electronic Precision Equipment Ltd. It comprised all the parts for a 2 valve TRF radio except the cabinet and speaker. The kit was called The Skysearcher and used 2 SP61valves and capacitive dropper for the heaters and of course live chassis HT. It cost the princely sum of 19/6d. I did get it to work, lots of fun for an 11 year old.

[Beardyman]

Not so much a kit as built from a library book by Gordon J King. I can't recall the title which is a little annoying. All the parts gleaned from Barkers of Portsmouth (long gone now) with a few weeks hard earned pocket money.
It was a battery 2 valve (a couple of the DAF range I think) reaction job.
I seem to remember it ran from a 1.5V D cell & a 45V battery which seemed to last forever, cheap to run!
Tuned into Radio Luxembourg late at night (well, for an 8-9 year old anyway!) through a pair of high impedance headphones (4K & very heavy all metal construction!) from the local Army Surplus shop.
Many happy memories in my small box bedroom at the back of the house.
The aerial was a long random length wire that my Dad had put up for the family radio in the living room, I just tapped into it. Found out that if they were listening downstairs and I got the adjustments wrong upstairs (in the bid for more volume!) there would be much howling going on downstairs, whoops!

[G6Tanuki]

There were certainly a lot more kits etc. around in the past; I like looking at old ARRL handbooks and seeing what was available - like the amplifier shown below.

Pricing is interesting - that $290 in 1968 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $2,547.42 today - and that $290 didn't include the valves, which I suspect would have undergone an even bigger price hike.

A couple of things, I suspect, led to the downfall of kit building.

1] The growing need for builders to have access to some test-gear. In the past a simple regenerative receiver could be put together and might probably work 'well enough' first time. Move on to something more complicated, even the simplest of superhets was probably going to need some test gear to align the various tuned-circuits, properly adjust tracking etc.

2] The growth of regulations, health and safety, and product-liability would make it rather tricky for a small kit manufacturer to put something significantly powerful on the market these days; complying with EMI regulations, CE/UKCA certification, and making the 'thing' safe enough that the constructor wouldn't potentially come to any electrocution hazards would not come cheap.

Look at some of the old leaflets for things like the "Premier Radio" self-assembly TV kits from the late-40s/early-50s; a modern electrical safety consultant would run away shrieking in horror at the idea of someone building such a thing!

Even so, $2.5K for a grounded-grid 2KW PEP amp is something I _might_ be prepared to pay.

[lesmw0sec]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

2] The growth of regulations, health&safety, and product-liability would make it rather tricky for a small kit manufacturer to put something significantly powerful on the market these days; complying with EMI regulations, CE/UKCA certification, and making the 'thing' safe enough that the constructor wouldn't potentially come to any electrocution hazards would not come cheap.

Look at some of the old leaflets for things like the "Premier Radio" self-assembly TV kits from the late-40s/early-50s; a modern electrical safety consultant would run away shrieking in horror at the idea of someone building such a thing!

You are not wrong there! My first job was with Sparks Data Sheets (Leslie Ormond Sparks) and one kit we supplied was a live chassis job (cabinet not supplied)! It is not just kits though, I recently restored an HRO receiver for a friend and was horrified to discover that 240V DC was connected to open terminals at the rear. Just imagine the tingle if you were fiddling around at the back, with the other hand on the case. Some modification was in order...

[G6Tanuki]

The other killer for people trying to recreate the 50s/60s kit thing is that - at least for the ham-radio side of things - much of the gear back then was crystal-controlled, and crystals were both [relatively] cheap and easy to acquire as surplus FT241/FT243 items from WWII.

Not so today.

And even if it was, being stuck on a couple of the frequencies you could afford crystals for back in the olden times just doesn't work anymore.

[Recently, buying three crystals to put my AEL3030 "Fish phone" transceiver on 80M cost over £100 And that only gets me three spot frequencies].

You won't really get much traction by trying to re-introduce the Heathkit "Benton Harbor Lunch Box" type of transceiver kit when you can buy an all-singing-all-dancing Chinese Baofeng/Wouxon/Xiegu transceiver for the same sort of money today as they were charging for a Lunchbox (not including crystals) in 1967.

[Smithdoor]

Good luck on finding new parts from the 1960's .
You down to making some of parts or Ebay for used. Tubes in 1960's just go to drug store and pickup the tube you need even get tested.
Some coils you can buy new from Amazon the rest you making.

Dave

[Smithdoor]

What we need is good schematics using basic parts availability from places like Amazon.

Most schematics I find on the internet is from 1950's and 1960's and next thing is find today's parts.

Dave

Originally Posted by Terry_VK5TM

No kits here either unless you count a 2M FM Transceiver designed by the local radio club in the late 60's.

Otherwise everything from valve amps and transmitters (ham band) through to various bits of semiconductor audio and test equipment stuff.

If I count right, only ever built 4 kits since about 1995, although I have produced quite a few for sale to others.

[Jez1234]

I'll probably be hated for saying this but the reintroduction of Heathkit "Benton Harbor Lunch Box" type gear is exactly whats needed as, IMHO, it ain't amateur radio unless you built it yourself. High performance, all singing and dancing, SDR, multiple memories, microprocessors, working your PC controlled SDR radio using wifi on your laptop etc etc is all the type of thing which means I have less than zero interest in getting a ham licence.

I have infinitely more respect for someone building a VFO controlled 10W 6L6 PA and using a valved regenerative as the station receiver. THAT'S amateur radio in the right spirit!

It's not the operating results that matter but the fact that you got them using gear you built and fettled yourself "on the kitchen table" and hence understand the function of every resistor and capacitor... even if you can only work a hundred miles on AM.

All hail the great Pat Hawker G3VA!

And on that bombshell, I'll get my coat...

[williamsunique]

I built many kits. I graduated from Crystal Set kits to a single valve TRF with plug-in coils for different wavelengths. It was battery powered. A single battery package supplied 1.5 volts and 90 volts battery type B11??
A couple of Sinclair kits, one was a calculater. Practical Wireless magazine Texan amplifier and it's associated tuner. The amplifier is still in regular use, the tuner is somewhere amonst other forgotten treasures buried somewhere in the house.
The last kits I built were about ten years ago, these were phono stages. I built FET, valve, transistor ones. Different ones for crystal cartridges, moving coil cartridges and moving magnet cartridges. Some with different equalisation settings.
There's many more electronic kits I have completed over the past sixty plus years, but as I am now settled on what I use I find no more need to make stuff, although I still keep my hand in repairing stuff.

Paul

[FIXITNOW]

When I got motivated into electronics in the late 70'sIi found kits were way out off my budget, so if I wanted something it was find a faulty one which were often freebees and learn to fix it with help from others with more skills.

[Gridiron]

Tried to build a Sinclair MicroFM Xmas 1965 and made complete hash of it, much beyond my abilities at the time.
My mother did manage to get a replacement from Sinclair, which worked but impossible to get it to stay tuned in. (Often wondered if connecting brushed aluminium front panel to a supply rail would have improved matters).
Mike.

[Sideband]

I must have got my Sinclair FM at around the same time....maybe a year later so I would have been 13 or 14. Mine worked OK but could be a bit unstable. Biggest problem was the near-obsolete PP5 that it used. They were difficult to get in 1965 and completely unobtainable a few years later. It didn't look right with a PP3 hanging out the back! I remember taking it out of its case and trying to build it into an amplifier but it was not successful.

[Hartley118]

I guess that many of us began radio construction, and indeed an entire electronics career by building kits. My learning experience started because they rarely worked first time, thus plunging me into the whole business of faultfinding, made more difficult because, unlike routine repairs, I had no confidence that it had ever worked.

Here are some surviving examples of kit equipment still serving me well today, though I must admit I've repurchased a couple from eBay more recently out of sheer nostalgia.

RSC A10 30-watt 'birdcage' amplifier from my student 'disco' days - though we didn't call it that then. It was just a loud record player.

Premier Radio superhet in its stylish ivory bakelite cabinet. I think I was 13 when I built it. Took me some weeks to diagnose a couple of wiring errors, but learned a lot in the process

Henry's Radio Contessa transistor portable with its 'top-hat' Ediswan transistors. Just need a PP11 battery!

Heathkit USC1 stereo valve preamp and pair of MA12 power amplifiers. I must admit inheriting this from a long-deceased colleague who built it. My colleague was an avionics engineer, so it's immaculately constructed. He'd be delighted to know that it's still serving me well in my workshop system

Just who were the unacknowledged expert designers behind the kits for these rather good products? And who managed the tricky supply chains of components? In some ways, it must have been more challenging than actual manufacturing because the skill of the constructor was a big unknown.

Martin

[Smithdoor]

Kits is part of learning electronics.
The next set after kits was getting a good schematic and building.

Today the real kits are gone and schematics are from the 1950's and 1960's using parts that are not made.

Time and time again someone writing about a very old schematic where can not find the patrs or a wild guess may or may not work.

Sites like this could place for modern schematic. Where could find common parts today.

Dave

[wd40addict]

Originally Posted by Hartley118

Just who were the unacknowledged expert designers behind the kits for these rather good products?

The chief engineer at Heathkit UK during the Hi-fi boom was GW Tillett. He previously worked at Decca and Armstrong amongst others.

More here https://worldradiohistory.com/hd2/ID...-Page-0016.pdf

[Sideband]

Like many on here, I had a Philips Electronics Engineer kit for Christmas 1965 so I would have been 13. Amazing to think that these where sold in good toyshops at the time. Some of the larger multiples also sold them.

I built all the projects but the first thing I built was the two transistor radio which worked well and there was a modification described which involved winding a different coil for the trawler band. My brother showed me how to modify it for the amateur Top Band (160 metres). That started me on the road to building shortwave receivers and a subscription to Radio Constructor. My brother who was a licensed amateur had a subscription to Practical Wireless and Wireless World so between us we had a good selection of stuff to build.

[mickm3for]

Hi things like the H A C transistor trf i built a copy of this using all new parts from China. The coil was home made Denco copy as well as the pcb. The most expensive part was the knobs, That could be put in to a kit the coil and chassis are the only non off the shelf parts, Home wound coils on a coil winder are easy to do after the 1st time number of turns etc see pics Also things like the usdx kits and QRP labs stuff but that is smd Mick

[G3PIJpeter]

There was also the BBC Children's programme 'Studio E' with Virginia McKenna and the one-valve radio - see http://www.thestudioeonevalveradio.o...bbcselflt.html Not my website but gives a fairly comprehensive overview.

After sending off for the instruction sheet, my dad and I sourced all the bits from the local radio / TV repair shop and the chassis and panel were made from plywood. The soldering iron was used pre-war by my Grandfather for fixing household copper items and was resurrected from the cellar, cleaned up with a large file and heated on the gas stove. The set did work - until I connected HT to fils.

A later Christmas present was a trip to the Edgware Road with my mother to buy a Henry's Radio 'Major-2 transistor radio and a Pifco soldering iron with attached spotlight. I can't claim that the quality of the soldering was any better than with Grandpa's four-ounce bit but, again, it worked and with the earpiece up my sleeve, enabled me to bring the results of the 1960 Oaks horse race to the betting sindicate in the back row at school in the middle of a lesson.

Peter