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I built several Heathkits when I was younger. The last thing I built was a SW717 (lower right corner of the stack on the site). It never worked well because o

I built several Heathkits when I was younger. The last thing I built was a SW717 (lower right corner of the stack on the site). It never worked well because of a loud hum. I assumed the hum was from poor power regulation so I did everything I could to improve it, but it was still awful. I sold it cheap to a Polish immigrant I knew at work, and I told him about the problem it had. He was determined to fix it and he finally did. The problem was poor shielding on the power transformer. The magnetic field was coupling into another transformer in the audio stage. He put some brass shielding around both transformers and it was extremely quiet after that. I was pretty pissed off at Heathkit for either giving me the wrong parts, or maybe just having a bad design. I learned from others with similar experiences that Heathkit had a poor reputation for having problems like this. I never bought another one. (Some ham radio operators refer to them as "Heathquit".) Edit: I read the write-up on the SW717 at their site here: https://people.ohio.edu/postr/bapix/SW-717.htm https://people.ohio.edu/postr/bapix/SW-717.htm They mention the hum, but claim they fixed it by reducing power supply ripple. That was definitely not the cause of the hum on my radio. I reduced the ripple to 20mV as measured with an oscilloscope, but the hum persisted.

dbcurtis 5y ago
Or “Griefkit” was another name. But a lot of the early and mid vintage ham gear was decent and a good value. I built or owned 2nd hand several back in the day. A former coworker of mine that lived for a while close to Benton Harbor said that a lot depended on which engineer at Heath did the design work. The resulting kits were uneven because the talent was uneven and they did not leverage opportunities for collaboration.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
They must have gone downhill then. They had a reputation early of being quality kits with quality components.
- anonymousiam 5y ago
  They had a good reputation early on. One of my uncles built a Heathkit color television in the late 60's and it spent more time broken than working. I cannot vouch for his soldering skills, and that was likely the problem with many of them. In my case, I had about a year of professional soldering (electronic assembly) experience when I put the SW717 together. All the solder joints were shiny and perfect. I think I was about 17 when I built it. I sold it at 19 and got something much better a few years later -- a Kenwood TS-440S/AT.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I worked my way through college as an electronics assembly technician. So I got very good at soldering, and had no trouble at all with the Heathkits. I expect if someone used a cheapo iron, and didn't have someone show them how to solder correctly, they'd have major maddening unreliability issues. P.S. one trick to save yourself lots of grief is, when done soldering the board, get a nice big magnifying glass. Before powering up the board, go over every joint with the glass. Look for any whiskers, bridges, crummy looking joints, wires too close together, etc. You'll be very glad you took the 5 minutes!

dbcurtis 5y ago

Or “Griefkit” was another name. But a lot of the early and mid vintage ham gear was decent and a good value. I built or owned 2nd hand several back in the day. A former coworker of mine that lived for a while close to Benton Harbor said that a lot depended on which engineer at Heath did the design work. The resulting kits were uneven because the talent was uneven and they did not leverage opportunities for collaboration.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

They must have gone downhill then. They had a reputation early of being quality kits with quality components.

anonymousiam 5y ago
They had a good reputation early on. One of my uncles built a Heathkit color television in the late 60's and it spent more time broken than working. I cannot vouch for his soldering skills, and that was likely the problem with many of them. In my case, I had about a year of professional soldering (electronic assembly) experience when I put the SW717 together. All the solder joints were shiny and perfect. I think I was about 17 when I built it. I sold it at 19 and got something much better a few years later -- a Kenwood TS-440S/AT.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I worked my way through college as an electronics assembly technician. So I got very good at soldering, and had no trouble at all with the Heathkits. I expect if someone used a cheapo iron, and didn't have someone show them how to solder correctly, they'd have major maddening unreliability issues. P.S. one trick to save yourself lots of grief is, when done soldering the board, get a nice big magnifying glass. Before powering up the board, go over every joint with the glass. Look for any whiskers, bridges, crummy looking joints, wires too close together, etc. You'll be very glad you took the 5 minutes!