EE Times article online

[Bill Coleman]

On 11/5/00 8:42 AM, Jack Crenshaw at jcrens at EARTHLINK.NET wrote:

>(1) I thought the first Heath Parasol had a Model A Ford engine in it.
>Lots of them are still flying that way.

I believe you are confusing the Heath Parasol with the Pietenpol Air
Camper. The Parasol is a bit small to take a Model A Ford. I've seen
plenty of examples of the Pietenpol. The only Parasol I've ever seen is
in a museum.

Granted, both aircraft are from the same era.

>(4) Building a Heathkit in 1991 (or 1975, for that matter) was not "almost
>as costly as
>buying a manufactured instrument."  It was _MORE_ costly.  Kits were a lot
>cheaper to
>build when the product was labor intensive, involving hand-wired,
>point-to-point wiring
>between tube sockets. It was not nearly as much cheaper after PCB's came
>along, and was
>more expensive once machines were developed to automatically stuff and
>solder the PCB's.

Yup.

And someday in the not to distant future, it's probably gonna be next to
impossible to assemble electronics without the aide of robotic equipment.
We're almost there with SMT, which humans can barely assemble by hand,
but when components get much smaller, electronics will likely become
something only large corporations can build.

>(5) I was at Heathkit for a brief time, in 1978-79.  I was involved with
>the computer
>line.  You wanna talk about your tales of betrayal, the story of the
>computer line would
>make a book all on its own.

As a builder of a kit computer (not Heath) in 1977, I know that many
interested parties purposly waited until Heathkit came out with their
offerings. But the H8 wasn't terribly popular. And the H89 had some
success, but then got neglected by Zenith.



Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL        Mail: aa4lr at arrl.net
Quote: "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!"
            -- Wilbur Wright, 1901

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