The Best Days of the Kit Makers

I was of the last generation that grew up on Heathkits and the others in the kit market of the Baby Boomer years. I started building kits in the mid 60s and built my last in the early 80s. Kids who grew up in the 70s had much less to choose from and by the mid 80s there was little to nothing.

There are still some small kits for the soldering-inclined. The Jameco catalog has two or three pages of very small, bare-circuit-board kits that can be assembled in a few minutes. Most are novelty items, some are actually useful and all are a good way to practice soldering. Unlike the great kits of the past, they don't have tutorial instructions and thus, don't teach the basics of soldering such that a beginner can start learning kit building skills from the very beginning. And virtually all of them don't include a case. If you want to enclose your finished product, you're on your own to find a cabinet and figure out how to mount the circuit board in it.

Heath was the biggest and best, making Ham Gear, Test Equipment, HiFi-Stereo and many other categories.
Dynaco made great HiFi-Stereo kits.
Harmon-Kardon, McIntosh and Scott made a few HiFi-Stereo kits.
Eico made mostly Test Equipment but also Stereo and Ham gear.
Lafayette Radio and Knight Kits from Allied Radio covered a broad range including all those above.
There were many others. The kit market was healthy and kits were a great way for thousands of kids to start a life interest in electronics.

Knight Kits were made from around 1957 to around 1966.
Eico kits were made from about 1945 to the late 70s.
Heath started right after WWII and died its final death in 1991. It was the end of an era.

Kits I built - and when:

Eico HF-92A AM-FM mono tuner - tubes - 1967
Eico ST-40 40W stereo amplifier - tubes - 1967
Heathkit VTVM - tubes - 1969
Heath 390-C RF probe - 1969
Dynaco PAT-4 preamp - 1970
Dynaco Stereo 80 power amp - 1970
Heath AR-27 mono FM receiver - transistor - 1971
Heathkit IM Distortion analyzer - tubes - 1974
Heath Weather Station - 1975

Heath HM-102 SWR meter
Heath Dwell/Tach
Heath Timing Light
Heathkit RLC meter
Heathkit Audio Signal Tracer
Heathkit H-100 computer - 1983

Kits I own but didn't build myself:

Heath AT-1 Amateur Transmitter
Eico HR-10 CW transmitter
Heath 723 shortwave receiver
Dynaco SCA-80c stereo amplifier
Heath Audio VTVM
Heath Cantenna

Other Interests
Folbot kayaks - Camping - Willys Jeep - Leatherman - Knives - Biking - Daisy BB guns -
the Horn - Music - Books -
Computers - Heathkits - Hopi silver work - China -

Opinion (for what it's worth)
Vacation Evaluations - Rants - Ludite Chronicles -

Miscellaneous
Wreck - Airbus A380 at O'Hare - Chicago Floods 2008 -

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10may09