HEATHKIT Hong Kong and service issues

[Multi-Volti Devices]

ProKit was the company in Hong Kong.

I'm not familiar with the code practice oscillator kit problem, but at
least some of the HK-232's and HC-1032's came out of Hong Kong. Maybe
the HD-1418 (?) - number minght be wrong, but it was the active filter.

The only problems I am aware of with the HK-232 were all engineering and
component procurement ones - which engineering should have been involved
in. The problems I experienced in service were lagging incompatibility
with different upgrades of the PK-232 MBX revisions, and a few dozen
1N4448 diodes that were color-bar labled (yellow-yellow-yellow-grey) -
the first band being wider for a cathode mark, but wrapping a little
around the end of the diode body, distorting the width of the band. The
lone grey stripe mislead people into interpreting it as a cathode band -
those who were alert enough to see that and check polarity sometimes got
burned by an ohmmeter with reverse polarity (alot of the Radio Shack
ones did that back then !^%$#%%). After having the foresight to verify
polarity of the diodes (but improperly indicated by some DVOM's), they
installed them all backwards - I think there were as many as 50 of them.

That could have been caught and documented - 1N270's and 1N34's (Ge
signal diodes) etc. have had such markings forever and never caused a
problem because the digits/colors were all different.

If Heath Engineering hadn't been Bobbittized and otherwise dismembered
so badly at that point, documentation, ECN's etc could have handled such
issues. The service dept. ended up resolving (band-aiding to best of
their ability) a number of things because engineering wouldn't/couldn't
even discuss many issues due to staff levels. (Management issue again.)

The HD-1418 - that made me mad - technicians spewed some rhetoric that
someone in Engineering (probably an urban legend started by someone who
got laid off an an earlier point) claimed about certain manufacturers'
op-amps being 'bad designs' causing oscillation....it was pretty
apparent to me that the variation in gain in the op amps wasn't taken
into consideration...again, this could have been fixed (maybe if there
were an Engineering department authorized to work on problems on
products still being serviced (it may have still been in production -
out of HK, but I don't know).

I guess now that I think about it, some of the ProKit-packed schematics
were bad - typos, overlapped drawing layers rendering things illegible -
I don't know who blame for that, except that it was preventable/fixable
if there were sufficient communication between offshore and stateside.

So, I don't think ProKit was so bad, unless it's been uttered by those
who worked with kitting up products with ProKit that it was bad.

Then remember the Standard Communications product line and the Yaesu
FT-747/SB-1400 and HK-21 Pocket Packet. These were not serviced at
component level - perhaps fro pragmatic reasons, tooling, equipment,
etc.

The VHF/UHF stuff - some of them had absolutely horrible manuals with
errors  I dont know how many radios were replaced because people coudn't
set a clock feature that was in the manual but not in the radio, until
someone in service figured it was a typo. At least they held onto the
radios to be evaluated and recycled (in theory, but that didn't work out
either). The HK-21's went into the trash until some of us who were
sickened by it started dumpster-diving to troubleshoot some of them out
of frustration. Countless dollars were lost on compete radio exchanges
over manual language issues, operator error, etc. (very few questions
asked by Heath - remember they always tried to treat the customer very
well, and the customer was always right, even if they were wrong).
Again, these were exemplary management decisions (no one had heard of
Dilbert's Pointy-Haired Boss yet).

The SB-1400 was another sad case - story I was told was that sales
weren't as expected and Heath cancelled a major part of the order, after
tooling. I don't remember if a shipment was refused. But this sabotaged
the Yaesu-Heath relationship - it may have been arranged from the
beginning that Heath was to handle all service issues , but this
couldn't have helped any. At least service was handled on this model on
a modular level - new radios were broken down into spare subassemblies
and swapped out ones parked indefinitely for some future resolution. -
Alot of the problems  were due to installation issues - try running a
solid state radio with SWR power-foldback protection, let alone
microprocessor, PLL, VCO, etc. into an end fed longwire. Remember RF
burns in the old days? Tube gear didn't bat an eye under such
circumstances.

The entire front panel was replaced on the SB-1400 when the VFO
stepped-tuning control bercame erratic (it was a light-duty switch-type
encoder). It didn't have thrust bearings like the old ham gear -  you
could hang on the vfo knob for hours. *FYI - if you have an SB-1400 -
prevention - be as light as possible on that VFO knob if you want it to
last, and if you can figger out how to get the front panel apart (AND
back together - it's not a task for beginners!), it does use the Yaesu
replacement part).

Heath had service costs figured out very well in the old days - this was
taken into consideration in establishing retail selling prices for
products.

The new economy of buy-sell products, as they were called were another
"OJ" in the slaughter of the Heath product line.

Nobody asked, but, hey at this point, it's easier to hit "send" than
delete. Maybe this adds one more caveat to the list of warnings for any
of you enthusiastic folks conspiring to reopen Heath. Oh yeah, one more
- something about some law requiring the availability of replacement
parts for seven years after a product was discontinued...I don't know
what the resolution of that was - some felt it wasn't intended for
Heath's situation. Who knows?

Murray

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