Fw: 104/104A

[Bill Coleman]

On 9/3/01 11:03 AM, Kees & Sandy at talen at INETPORT.COM wrote:

>Apparently the 104, which was Heathkit's FIRST major ALL Solid
>State HF SSB Transceiver, was rushed to production (probably
>over the loud objections of Engineering) to make the Christmas
>rush and they paid for it later since the 104A upgrade kit was
>offered free to 104 purchasers. Heathkit also started providing
>several of the cards/sub-assys "prebuilt" to avoid construction
>problems. It was quite a complex kit for the avarage builder
>and Heath received many of them back as "unable to get it to
>work".

This lies in stark contrast to today's situation with Elecraft, where
many kits have been successfully built, and the K2 in particular is a far
better radio than the 104/104A.

I think two factors limited Heath's success with these units:

1) Engineers didn't have a awful lot of experience creating a solid-state
design. They probably spent too much time worrying about the high-power
RF deck and not enough about basic design. Or they worked to hard to use
broadband circuits, instead of frequency-dependant ones like in their
tube transceivers.

2) The availability, quality and reliability of solid-state components in
those days was much worse than today. Some of the parts in the 104 series
are unobtainium today.

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

-----------------------------------------------------------
This list is a public service of the City of Tempe, Arizona
-----------------------------------------------------------

Subscription control - http://www.tempe.gov/lists/control.asp?list=HEATH
To post - HEATH at LISTSERV.TEMPE.GOV
Archives - http://interactive.tempe.gov/archives/HEATH.html