Who had Heathkit items in their house?

[Duke]

I know my dad put together a Heathkit microwave oven and we had a big console TV.

[alijonny]

I remember seeing that kind of stuff at garage sales. lol.

[RonW]

We made an amplifier. A friend of ours made a color TV. This was back in the mid-'70s.

[Bill in MN]

We had all kinds of Heathkit stuff.

[Mark in Toronto]

Not available in Canada.

Did Radio Shack sell them before they became a joke?

[Mark 88/M5 Houston]

I built a shortwave radio and roamed the world every evening with it for a couple of years.

[a]

I built a shortwave radio and roamed the world every evening with it for a couple of years.

Yah, my brother built one, it worked well. The Lafayette catalog was an inch thick of thin paper.

[Duke]

Not available in Canada.

Wrong.......

[Bill in MN]

Just when you think the world has gone to hell...

http://www.heathkit.com/index.php?optio ... Itemid=233

[Mark in Toronto]

Not available in Canada.

Wrong.......

HA! Mail order in both the U.S. and Canada.

[mooseheadm5]

We had one growing up. We might still have it.

[stuartinmn]

I had a Heathkit 25" color TV for many years. It was a hybrid set (i.e. half transistor and half vacuum tube circuitry.) A neat feature was it had a built in dot generator, so I could do alignments without the need for bench instruments.

It weighed a ton, though.

[DanOKC]

I did, my first scope was a Heathkit I bought about 1976 or 77. I was 13 & we didn't have a Heathkit store in OKC. There was one back then on Ross Lane in Dallas. My family went to go to Padre' Island for vacation back then a couple times, so I got my wish.
Sometime soon after, I got one of the Heathkit trainer things too, had breadboard with 5 volt supply & variable power supplys & basic sine, squarewave generator built in.

[oldskool]

My Dad thought it appropriate to burn me with his cigars.

[rmiddendorf]

oldskool is just entertaining.

My dad still has an amp he made- I think in the 60s but perhaps the 70s. It had a green tuning bar that took up most of the front, 4 knobs and a row of buttons across the bottom. Cool for the time.

[Shawn D.]

Did Radio Shack sell them before they became a joke?

No, Heathkit was its own entity and had their own stores.

[desmofan]

I built a shortwave radio and roamed the world every evening with it for a couple of years.

I had one of these too as a kid, and loved it. I also built and used a metal detector.

Heathkit was great stuff to learn circuitry, soldering techniques, etc. It's a shame that most kids today have no interest in this sort of "training".

[clangpap]

Not available in Canada.

Wrong.......

I built a stereo amplifier in my early teens, worked well for a kid just learning to solder. Had enough power to get my parents to yell "turn it down!!!". Dad said the bass gave him a foot massage as he watched TV upstairs.

Thanks for reminding me of these, maybe I should be less of a chicken about the car's electronics.

[wkohler]

I came across one of the amplifiers a few years back. Pretty neat, but it wasn't for me at the time.

[TSMacNeil]

I didn't have any mind-expanding stuff as a kid.
As soon as I could work, I had to work. My meager checks or cash from my paper route or lawn cutting helped pay household bills. It was that way until I graduated from high school and put myself through college.
I always wanted to build a Heathkit radio...never did.

Oh well