Building Kits Growing Up As A Kid And Now As An Adult

[James D. Mayfield]

For me, I never really had the chance to build a Heathkit. They were still
around, and I had more than the interest, but I had no one to point me in
the right direction. I built my first radio from an encyclpedia, it was a
crystal radio, I was in the 6th grade. I built it with no ones help, and it
even worked. I recall one time begging my Dad to buy me a little aircraft
receiver kit from Radio Shack, I think my Dad did not want to buy it for
two reasons. 1. it cost money, 2. He had no clue about electronics. So we
bought it and went home, as I recall Dad put it together, and it did not
work. My dads new brother in law, Rob Lundstrum, happen to be going over,
Rob was a ham! it got it working. One day while visiting Robs family, Rob
offered to give me some sort of a Novice rig, my Dad would not let him give
it to me. I think my dad, was just afraid that it would cost him more money
down the road if I got in to ham radio, and of course Dad knew nothing
about it. That sure sucked! for me.

I guess that's why I buy anything I like today, and I sure like a lot of
radios! Had things been different Rob could have gotten me going, and I
could have built lots of Heathkits. I guess this all would have been about
1970 or so, lots of good kit building going on still at that time.

73 Dave


At 04:42 PM 4/22/99 -0700, Harvey A. Kader wrote:
>A member of this reflector waxed nostalgically about building kits as a
>kid.
>
>My first Heathkit was a SW-717 AM/Shortwave receiver. I still have it. I
>literally had to beg my father to buy it for me. It was bought in the
>early 70's for I believe 75.00
>Canadian. That was a lot of money in those days. Come to think of it,
>today it still is alot of money.
>
>The irony is as a child and young adult I could not afford to buy most
>of these great kits, even with a newspaper route, and neither could my
>parents. Now as an adult, I have some money available to buy kits, but
>Heathkits are no longer around to build. How ironic!
>
>At least I should count myself lucky that I was able to build a small
>number of Heathkits.
>
>Now as an adult I could buy Heathkits already built by someone else, but
>it just isn't the same thing.
>
>Anybody else have stories about how they got into building Heathkits?
>
>Harvey A. Kader - http://www.angelfire.com/on/vacuumtubes
>
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*********************************************
Dave Mayfield KB9BNR
Personal Web Page
http://home.revealed.net/qste/bnr/index.html

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