Introduction
In the beginning, there was Glow...
My interest and love for Heathkit began in the late 1960's at the age of two. My father, then was KF4VI, bought a Heathkit GR-180 table-top color television, with cart, and assembled it on the kitchen table. When the large box containing the table-top cabinet was empty, I got to play "Fort" until it couldn't be a fort any longer.
A couple of years later I received a Heathkit EK-1 multi-meter from their education series to build. After it was finished, Dad checked it and tested it to find a few mistakes I needed to correct. After some rework it was complete and ready for use. I don't know what happened to it but have seen them every once in a while on the net.
Fast forward a couple of decades and I now have an SB-401/301/600 set of my own with the electronic keyer. Over a decade later I find myself owning the same SB-401 and related pieces my Dad built hoping to restore it to operation since he didn't want it any longer. While planning this restoration, I also have his TC-2 Tube Checker, IG-102 RF Signal Generator and a Paco Oscilloscope, Model S-55 he built. He had a Paco VTVM and several other Heathkit equipment pieces I mistakenly failed to pick up and it wound up in other's hands during a garage sale. My fault as I grabbed the wrong tote in too much of a hurry to get back to work to make sure I got the right one. Today I have a Heathkit IM-13 bench model VTVM so I can use something of that vintage to work with. I also made an impulse purchase of a 6E5 Magic Eye tube just in case I find an IT-11 or IT-28 with a bad or missing tube and needing repair for sale somewhere.
If anything, I have come back to my first love of electronics. It's now vintage technology to say the least, but it is still a tech with enduring capability. I intend to merge old point-to-point design with more modern discrete components to keep these classic 1960's and '70s radios and test equipment in working order where possible. Many parts are difficult to find and are in good condition even in storage. Other parts just can't be stored without themselves deteriorating out of spec. For example, my only real concerns are some components in the RF path and how to choose the right components for the job. Where a carbon composition resistor has really no inductance and was/is the ideal part for the job, a newer metal film or metal oxide cannot be ideal due to how it's made. These newer resistor designs inherently have inductance resistance at higher frequencies. Their resistance value drops significantly as frequency increases thus changing the circuit behavior. This can damage or burn out other parts like transformers that cannot be replaced easily or without having new pieces custom manufactured to meet the specs of the original. Money, money and mo money. You get the idea.
With a little research (or more realistically, a lot) I hope to be able to restore all of my equipment to better than new operation. These projects will be posted as work is accomplished so there may be a large span of time between updates on individual project blogs. If I were retired and had plenty of time and money, I would sit down and just enjoy working on them and posting updates from dawn to dusk and back to...well, you know.
So please drop by my ham shack every so often with a cup of coffee and check the updates as I restore the 40-plus year old radio and general tech I grew up with from a bygone era.
Thanks for reading!
73!
Smitty
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| My original design concept after restoration using the original cabinet my Dad built for this radio set. I added the shelf, computer stuff and Kenwood TS-450S/AT for use as a modern digital comm's station. |
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