The Radio Pages

Boatanchors I have Known and Loved

Various Heathkits

LIke so many hams, I had as my first receiver a Heathkit, an AR-3. My father's brother had found it in a pawnshop, probably in or around Temple, Texas. Uncle John loaned it to my father, who is an avid fisherman, so that Dad could copy marine weather reports on the old (and now largely abandoned) 2 MC marine band. Dad, though, soon found he could copy them more reliably on LF via the GLS non-directional navigation beacon. Monitoring GLS offshore also had the bonus of allowing him to use the ferrite rod antenna in his new Sony (the first Sony radio any of us had ever seen) as a navigational device. The Heathkit was exiled into the cabinet in the den where Mom kept Dad's record player and their 78 RPM records, whence I hauled it out and began playing with it a few years later.

This was in 1968, so the Heathkit must have been only nine or so years old. I didn't hear much except WWV, as I was as innocent of propagation theory as the day I was born, some eight years earlier. I do distinctly remember hearing a VOA signoff which said, "This broadcast has come to you from Manilla in the Philippines:" my first DX.

We also quickly learned to use the Heathkit to listen to our little 27 MHz toy walkie-talkies, greatly extending their range for one-way transmissions. Other than these little successes, though, I was too immature at the age of eight or nine to do the learning and experimentation necessary to become truly fascinated by shortwave radio.

Four short years later (although it seemed like decades to me at the time), I was more able to observe and learn. It was also a jumpy era, when we were always paying attention to news from abroad. President Nixon, desperate to distract the public's attention from the Watergate coverup, began various foreign policy adventures (such as putting all nuclear forces on the highest state of alert during the Yom Kippur war) that kept us all in suspense without saving his presidency. In addition, the Vietnam war was still going. I was particularly interested in the latter, as in a mere four years I would be cannon fodder should the draft resume. In those pre-CNN days, the best sources of news that ABC, NBC, and CBS didn't have time for were the shortwave broadcasters. So, I found out which bands were suitable for which times of day, and began to DX in earnest.

The AR-3 was a very good choice for a first receiver, so it was a happy accident that put one in my hands. Simple to use, it lacked the confusing plethora of specialized functions found on more expensive radios. It had plenty of sensitivity, working well with the few feet of wire I threw on the floor for my first antenna. Moreover, it had adequate selectivity; I seem to recall it being in the 6-8 KHz range for 9 dB down or so. It featured bandset/bandspread tuning, which allowed one to tune in those tricky SSB signals with relative ease.

Moreover, a kit was obviously only as good as the skills of the person who built it. Partially digested solder often cracked with age, giving Heathkits the nickname "Heathquits." I myself did a poor job a few years later on my HW-16. But whoever built this particular AR-3 knew their stuff; it never gave a moment's trouble.

It did not work well on MW, and I preferred my Zenith console for listening to music and ballgames. It also had a noise limiter that did little against power line noise, lots of images and spurious responses, and rather poor sensitivity above about 12 MHz. Unfortunately, the bandset/bandspread scheme did not allow easy duplication of loggings, as the bandset tuning rate was too fast and the dial too poorly calibrated. These were all normal shortcomings on an inexpensive general-coverage receiver of that era, though, and the good sensitivity and smooth bandspread tuning made up for a lot.

It had an odd feature that prevented me from learning to use the BFO for a long time. The audio gain had to be all the way up, and I mean all the way, for the BFO to work; otherwise, with the BFO engaged one got a powerful, low-frequency oscillation in the audio final. I now know this was due to the use of feedback to cause oscillation in the BFO; without the audio gain all the way up, feedback was insufficient. Once I mastered this trick, I found the BFO adequate.

So, I listened and listened. "Radio RSA, the external service of the South African Broadcasting System" was a favorite, because it was so far away. Before long, I had heard the BBC (not knowing I was hearing relays from relatively close Antigua), Radio Nacional de Espana, Radio Cairo, and others. Radio Prague, due to my Czech ancestry, was a favorite.

So was Radio Moscow. With the U.S. facing inevitable defeat in Vietnam and serious economic trouble (our first in forty years) at home, it actually looked like the we were loosing the Cold War in those days, and I was perversely spellbound by Moscow's nightly propaganda broadcasts. Moreover, Nixon's administration was by then so transparently misleading us about everything that it was comforting to hear Moscow make assertions that were also obvious lies. In my memory, I can still hear that pseudo-jazz version of "Midnight in Moscow", the Kremlin chimes, and the poorly-filtered fifty-cycle hum modulation that always made it sound like there was a Pratt and Whitney radial aircraft engine left idling for some reason in the back of Radio Moscow's studios.

I learned that Moscow had loud signals every night, only fifty kilohertz or so apart in the 41m band. While listening on these frequencies, I was often annoyed by signals which sounded like a bad stereotype of a Frenchman laughing ("Honh-honh-honh!"). One day, it occurred to me to experiment with the BFO on these odd signals, which were, of course, hams using SSB. I learned to decode them, and, fascinated, overheard my first amateur radio QSOs.

About the same time, a kindly teacher broke the rules and allowed me to take out of the Cy-Fair High School Science Library a book called, "The Radio Amateur's Handbook," edited by Bob Hertzberg, W2DJJ. Some genuis, in a typical fit of educational institution wisdom, had decided these books should be off limits to students, and we would never even have known about them if a "science" teacher had not set fire to his classroom in the course of a chemistry experiment, destroying it and several others and thus forcing the administration to open up the heretofore locked Science Library for use as an emergency classroom. The teacher was, of course fired, and replaced by another "science" teacher, who came into the classroom one day freaked out by the fact that she had seen the moon and sun in the sky at the same time, which she thought a physical impossiblity. Obviously, the Cy-Fair School District was having trouble determining who was qualified to teach this tricky "science" thingy. No wonder they kept the incomprehensible Science Library under lock and key!

The book I "checked out" (there was no procedure in place; I simply took it home) was not an ARRL Handbook, but one put out by Thomas Y. Crowell Company. In it, Col. Hertzberg, with his wonderfully clear, amusing, and personable voice introduced me, as he had so many others, to ham radio. I learned the basic principles of electronics, as well as elementary receiver, transmitter, and antenna theory. I couldn't bear to part with this volume, and after I left for college I told myself I would have to return it, but never did. In retrospect, that was a happy decision, as it almost certainly would have gone to the landfill with all the wonderful pre-war books on farm equipment and automobiles from the main library, when old Cy-Fair High was closed a few years back. Col. Herzberg lived to a ripe old age, and I always wanted to write him, thanking him for the wonderful work he did Elmering so many thousands of new hams (of course, he WAS paid for it). I never did, and Col. Bob is now a silent key, but I'm happy to say his son Paul is still active in amateur radio and I have expressed these sentiments to him.

After about a year, I got my novice license. I also built my first Heathkit, a code practice oscillator, which did not work until my uncle Jim Ed reversed the diode I had put in backward.

Now I needed a transmitter. Heathkit had a transceiver, very highly thought of, called the HW-16. It was a CW only transmitter, crystal controlled, but could be used to read the mail on SSB QSOs. The power input was variable, from the 75 watts that was the Novice maximum, all the way to 90 watts when one became a General (few of us understood, as Novices, that the extra fifteen watts would not make for a detectable difference). It also featured full break-in (QSK), a relatively advanced feature. I decided to build one.

By 1976, when I bought my HW-16, Novices were finally allowed to use VFO control. I bought and built the HW-16 first, planning to build the HG-10B VFO when I had saved up some more money.

But within months, Heathkit removed most of their Amateur products from production. In short order, the HR-10, the DX-100, the GR-9, the SB series separates, and other favorites disappeared from the Heathkit catalog. Even the HW-101, the most popular Heathkit transceiver of all time, was dropped. The HG-10B was among the items discontinued. I had to buy a used HG-10B from another ham.

I never had a QSO with the HW-16 as a novice. In those days, the Novice ticket was not renewable; Novices had to upgrade within the year or start all over. By the time I got the HW-16 wired and working (it had to go to the Heathkit store to clean up the sorry wiring I did around the filter cap), I was almost out of time. So, I used it to copy the W1AW practice runs. Success! I was a General before the deadline was up.

After a while, the novelty wore off using 'phone. I became nostalgic about CW and curious about the performance of the HW-16, so I began using it for CW QSOs. With its QSK and relatively narrow bandwidth, it was far superior for CW work to the Tempo One I had bought meanwhile for SSB use. I had many enjoyable QSOs with it before I went to off to college.

While preparing to upgrade to General, and before I purchased the Tempo One, I decided I needed to start preparing a SSB setup, as I had planned to never use code again once I got my General. Heathkit, about the same time they canceled the HR-10 et al, excitedly announced a new series of solid-state integrated circuit rigs. There was to be a receiver/transmitter combination, as well as a transceiver (which turned out to be the excellent SB-104, still revered today), both SSB/CW-capable set ups. While the transmitter was yet in development, the receiver, the HR-1680, went into production.

It was a relatively sophisticated rig. It offered accurate analog frequency readout, calibrated by a crystal calibrator, a CW filter, and excellent sensitivity and selectivity figures. I bought one and put it together. This time, my soldering skills were improved to the point that I did not have to send it to the store to have them repair my work, and it fired up the first time I switched on the AC. It was easily aligned, and proved quite sensitive when finished. I used it as my main ham radio receiver until well into the '90s.

Not only did the '1680 work the first time I turned it on, but I modified it to deal with a problem regarding oscillation in the RF stage. Heathkit issued a service rider for this problem involving a fix whose exact nature escapes me at this late date. Well before then, I used the rather simpler expedient of shielded cable for the leads to the preselector. It killed the oscillations without reducing the sensitivity, and I had come up with it out of my own imagination.

I had become a real ham.

The HR-1680 was a good receiver. Quiet for a solid-state rig (it had no PLL circuitry or digital display or computerized gain controls to generate internal noise), it was extremely stable. The CW filter worked very well for reducing QRM. So well, in fact, that I later used it in transceive mode with my Tempo One, which didn't have any CW filters. The two AGC rates were well chosen, and they and the stability of the rig made for comfortable hands-off monitoring. I guess the worst thing about it was the need to constantly re-adjust the clutch in the dial drive; the crystal calibrator worked by holding the dial in place with a friction button while the knob was turned, turning the VFO cap without allowing the dial to turn. One had to fiddle constantly with the clutch to get it to slip consistently when held by the friction button, without slipping when the knob was being turned in normal operation.

Had Heathkit followed through and made a transmitter as functional as the HR-1680, I'm sure I would have bought it, built it, and remained a satisfied Heathkit customer. But Heathkit screwed me again. They had development problems with the matching transmitter for the '1680, the kind of problems that happen when a company is flailing about for direction. First it was to be an all solid-state SSB/CW rig, then a SSB/CW rig with 6146 finals, then a CW only rig. The result was the 35 watt HX-1675, and the more powerful HX-1681. My fellow CW ops claim these are great rigs. I don't know if they are or not; I've never used one.

For me, the whole point of the HR-1680 had been to build something I could use on SSB, and I had bought it assuming Heathkit would keep their promise to develop a matching SSB transmitter. Disgusted with Heathkit's capriciousness, I bought the afore-mentioned Tempo One from Madison Electronics in downtown Houston. I never bought another new Heathkit.

Nor was I alone. Other hams were tired of Heathkit's haphazard commitment to the Amateur market. With the exception of the SB-104, sales fell markedly. Heathkit repaid this indifference in kind by withdrawing from the Amateur market altogether.

For a while, Heathkit kept afloat with Hi-Fi systems, and such, but by the 'eighties people were no longer interested in building their own Hi-Fis. Around this time all the Heathkit stores were closed; you couldn't even go in and window-shop. Then, Heathkit entered the home security market, which was expanding rapidly enough to afford them some business. They lasted long enough to become one of the many firms who bet the farm on home computers. Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM gave them (as well as others) the coup de grace in the early 'nineties before turning on each other.

As mentioned in the photo caption, I still have the AR-3. It worked well the last time I checked it a few years ago, but I'll bet by now it needs to be re-capped. I also have the HR-1680 and HW-16, but they are almost thirty years old now and in need of refurbishing, too. They're all on the "to do" list, but who knows when...

And, on top of the external VFO for my Ten-Tec Omni D sits a Heathkit HD-15 phone patch, which I bought used for ten dollars. This, and the HS-1681 speaker I bought to match the HR-1680, are the only pieces of Heathkit gear still integrated into my station.