Source for kits

[Francois Dion]

Carl Hyde wrote:
> a mother looking for simple kits for her son to learn
> soldering and radio from. There are many kit
> manufacturers supplying kits.

Canada is also a good source for kits as the cdn$ is
worth about US$ 0.70. When I went to Montreal some
weeks ago (been in the US for a while now), I stopped
at a store where I used to buy my components as a
kid and teenager. Still on the same street, but a
much bigger store now. They do sell kits of various
complexity. They have a web site but not much on it
yet, but you can get a catalog thru mail:
www.master-vox.com

I also remember in the 80s a place in California
called Dick Smith Electronics. I've built numerous
kits from them, including a few power amps. They had
a store near LA (where I would go) and one near SF.
Are they still around in one form or another? DSE was
an australian company, part of the Woolworth group.

> It is simple enough for today's
> X-generation slackers to actually learn a useful skill

Labels and generalisations can be dangerous. That slacker
characteristic of gen-X has been proven to be nothing
more than media hype. Gen-X are entrepreneurs, skilled,
well paid and with a very low unemployment rate.

I am pretty sure that the low number of HAMs from the gen-X
crowd, is not because of lack of soldering skills, but due
to the explosion of the personnal computer in the 80s. BBS
systems and stuff like FIDO newsgroups (before the 86-on usenet
days) and the like provided for communication around the world,
without the HAM gear and license. Nowadays the free time that I
can spend on soldering, I do it with microprocessors, to automate
my house, on tube audio design (I'm designing/building a few headphone
amplifiers, my pair of Heathkit W7 with vintage Fisher speakers are a
little too loud according to my wife) or on fixing vintage stuff.
On the hobby programming side, I develop tools for flight simulators
(Propilot 99). I'm not a HAM (yet). But I can see using all these
skills to come up with some kind of hybrid, like the Kachina 505.

To conclude, share the knowledge, and share the passion for building
things, share your heathkit stories. You might get some audiophiles
on the ham side, or vice-versa.

Ciao,
Francois Dion

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