Worst assembly job ever...

[Glen Zook]

I grew up 35 miles from the old Heath plant in St. Joseph, Michigan (mailing address was Benton Harbor but the actual plant was in St. Joseph).  The employees at the Heath plant could "tell some tales" about kits that were sent back for service.  The most humorous that I ever heard was the kit that came in with elbow macaroni all over the place.

When contacted, the kit builder said that the instructions said to place spaghetti over certain wires but that he couldn't find any hollow spaghetti.  Therefore, he used the closest thing that he could find and that was elbow macaroni!

Several years ago I obtained a WRL SM-90 screen modulator (for the Globe Chief series) to re-create my original station when I upgraded from Novice Class to General Class in late 1959 (Globe Chief 90A, WRL-755 VFO, SM-90 modulator, and Hallicrafters S-107 receiver).  Now these are fairly scarce.  I was looking on eBay one day and I came across an auction that had less than 10 minutes to go and there were no bids at all and the starting bid was $10.  The item was described as a microphone preamplifier but I immediately recognized it as an SM-90.  So, I bid and got the SM-90 for $10.  Now the seller was one of those people who buy up estate items and then sell them on eBay and he had put in the disclaimer that the unit definitely was "untested".

The SM-90 is basically a circuit board with 2-tube sockets and the other components installed.  The transformer mounts on the outside of the mini-box and there is an octal socket and octal plug for connection to the transmitter as well as one of the old Amphenol single button microphone connectors.

When the package arrived I opened it and then opened the unit.The unit was virtually "mint" (and the term "mint" is WAY overused).  Every resistor, capacitor, tube sockets, and other wires that went to the circuit board had been put through the board, cut off to exactly 1/2 inch below the board, and then a "drop" of solder put on the end of the wire.  The wires to the octal socket were wrapped around the terminal and then a "drop" of solder was put on the end of the wire.  Finally, the wires to the octal plug were put through the pin and then another drop of solder put on the end and the same thing with the microphone connector.  Of course there was no way that the unit could ever work!  

I suspect that the builder had wired it and then could not make it work.  Therefore it was just put on a shelf (back in the late 1950s) and was eventually found as part of the estate.  I cleaned the board, soldered the wires, and the SM-90 works fine.

Glen, K9STH

Website:  http://k9sth.com


--- On Tue, 8/18/09, Scott Roberts <ng19delta at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
 
I was looking it over- it looks great on the outside- when I noticed what looked like a couple loose wires inside the remote unit, after I took off the cover.
 
So I opened the unit- Wow. What a bad job! Almost all the solder joints are poor- I mean Real Bad! The antenna connections, which had once been connected, were disconnected for some reason.

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