Why did Heath die?

[Chris]

Hi Folks,
  I read a recent reply on the list server that discussed the downfall of Heath and thought I would
add a little of my own insight as well as a bit of rebuttal.

  One of the more profitable product lines that Heath and later Zenith/Heath ran was their educational
and training series. You may remember these items, microprocessor, digital and various analog
trainers complete with breadboarding areas lab components and training manuals. One of the reasons
that these items were so popular was because the government was subsidizing technical schools in the
early to mid '80s and these schools needed training materials. At the time I worked for another, much
smaller, company that produced these same kind of items and sales were very brisk. It seemed that the
subsidies to these training centers were quite substantial and widespread. I remember giving training
seminars to quite a few of these trade schools that seemed, to be candid, more interested in enrolling
students than actually teaching them! Anyway, needless to say this was a very good market for quite
a few companies. The subsidies to these schools were pulled very quickly in the mid to late 80's and
most of the manufacturers of the training hardware and software went belly up. I'm sure that this
was a significant loss to Heath/Zenith as well. I'm also certain that the narrow sightedness of those
in charge of Heaths product line pulled the plug on the more marginal, but steady, kit items that
was Heaths namesake.

  Now for the rebuttal part of this message. There was a statement made by another poster that state
of the art equipment can not be assembled by hobbyist with out VERY expensive and specialized surface
mount manufacturing equipment. This is not the first time I have heard this statement, both in person
and in various online forums. This statement is complete nonsense! Now I am not saying that there aren't
specialized design out there that are fabricated in such a way as to preclude hobbyist from building them,
there are and always have been. I remember cursing an instrumentation recorder that was made to military
specs, back in the 1960's, that I couldn't fix because it used epoxy potted modules. At any rate, assembling surface mount circuitry is very easy to do with a regular soldering station (having 2 is even
better). My, very small, company produces about 20 different PC board designs. All of our designs
have been converted to surface mount technology in the last several years. The reason that we converted
to surface mount was that they are both easier and cheaper to fabricate than leaded designs. I ran
a ham club construction project a few weeks ago; the subject kit was a tone encoder for the local
repeater. The circuit board was the size of a postage stamp and had about 30 components. There were the
usual group of fellows that said they couldn't do it, the same fellows that hadn't picked up a soldering
iron in the last 30 years, and then there was the group that wanted to learn. We (they) built about
10 of the kits in 45 minutes. Not to bad considering that not one of the fellows had ever tried surface
mount construction before.

  My intention is not to be mean spirited to the author of the previous post, in fact, I think
most folks feel the way that he does on this subject matter. But, I also remember in the 1960's
a clever friend of mine stating that transistors were nothing more than 3 legged fuses and that
no sane person would try a home brew project with them. Well technology marches on, its just a matter
of whether you want to go along for the ride. I will concede that hand assembly of surface mount
circuitry is far more expensive and time consuming than automatic assembly of the same, but who
cares if you want to assemble and design your own equipment? I believe that the true reason
for the current slow trend in kit production is more economic than technological. Why pay more
fore a kit than it would cost to buy the finished product? Well, lets wait and see. As more
highly integrated components come along, the component count on a lot of neat stuff is dropping
to the point that kit building may become a very viable alternative, especially if you want to build
your rig for the shear enjoyment of producing something yourself. Bye the way, have you noticed the
increasing quantity of home brew projects in the ham hobby magazines lately?


-73,
-Chris

-------------------------------------
Name: Chris WA3LDI
E-mail: Chris <c_sieg at conknet.com>
URL http://www.conknet.com/piexx
Date: 4/21/99
Time: 1:51:15 AM

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