Greetings and glad to be aboard

[Jim Lowman]

At 12:49 AM 3/30/97 -0800, you wrote:
>Great post Stephan, and I am also enjoying everyone else's
>reminiscences here!
>
>On 29 Mar 97 at 2:43, Stephan Woytowicz spoke about Greetings and
>glad to be aboard and said:
>
>> Hello to everyone,
>
>[SNIP]
>
>> I had a heavy heart when Heath closed it's doors, but this list
>> could provide the right jump start for a Heath renaissance. I wonder
>> if, as the numbers on this list grow large enough, if they or
>> someone would consider resurrecting Heathkit?
>
>Wouldn't THAT be great! Wow, what an idea!
>
>In the meanwhile for those of us who LOVE to build kits, there ARE
>a number of suppliers out there and if we will support them by BUYING
>from them, they will stay up and running, NLIKE Ryan Communications
>which recently went under due to lack of sales.
>They had advertised in QST, and done OK for a while with a line of
>PC board QRP transmitters. I was sorry to see them go...

<cynical mode on>

I share Stephan's loss about the death of Heathkits.  For that
reason, and from my experiences of working in the corporate world
early in my programming career, it is my for hope that everyone with
a degree in Business Administration will someday end up driving a taxi,
or selling flowers on a freeway off-ramp.  Nothing matters but the bottom
line today, and that attitude has cost this country many fine businesses,
not the least of which was Heath.  As hams, we have probably seen more fine
businesses close their doors over the years.

<cynical mode off>

I apologize for venting like that, but I often have visions of some of the
ham gear that would be Heathkits today, if they were still around.  I'm sure
that there would be far fewer hams buying Japanese gear.

To follow Bryan's excellent recommendation, I would suggest that those of you
who are still interested in kitbuilding check out the new kits that Ten-Tec
has
to offer.  There are single-band QRP CW transceivers for 80, 40, 30 and 20
meters,
as well as 2-meter and 220-MHz FM transceivers.  You can visit their
Webpage at:

http://www.tentec.com/

73 de Jim - KF6CR