On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 16:31:34 UTC, (Michael
Black) wrote:

And I think it was other issues that got Heath out of the kit business.
there was a period when they were selling to a wide range of the public.
...
Michael VE2BVW

All reasonable points but I'm interested in what people observed
happening, not their interpretation of why it happened. You make
good points and are welcome to expand on them but I wonder how the
die-off appeared to folk who saw it happening.

The report on the Maryland Heath store (Rockville, I've shopped
there and at the Alexandria store) dragging the audio and other junk
to local Hamfests is interesting.

By the way, the old Heath Tube-Audio junque commands a premium from
the audio-nuts. I don't know why. It's not like -cough-cough-
tube SSB transceivers.

A word about tube audio vice tube (boatanchor) radio. The audio
nuts say that tube audio is superior, produces better sound.

Generally tube SSB/CW types don't claim that. I have tube radios
because they are inexpensive and I can fix them. Solid state
radios could be just as maintainable but the manufacturers make the
parts too small for me to work on. My SB-104A and SB-303 are
really tube style radios (except for the 104A's digital readout),
mostly big, cheap common parts.

It wasn't just the economics of kits, the Hallicrafters, National,
etc were done in by something else.

In the 1960's, during the ramp up to Incentive Licensing, Wayne
Green was blustering and pounding the table about how Japan, which
was toying with both no-code and a low-barrier licenses, would
produce millions of engineers and technicians, Their skills would
design and build products that would dominate ham radio and
eventually electronics.

While other factors contributed to the die-off, there is no question
that Wayne called it exactly right. Remember in the 1960's, there
was essentially no Japanese amateur radio gear imported, except for
that mechanical key and maybe code practice oscillators..

It probably wasn't until the early 1970's that Yaesu and Kenwood
showed up. Now ICOM, Japan Radio, and others have the lions share
of the market.

What happened to Hammarlund? EF Johnson? Were there fire sales
every year at Dayton? What happened to the last run of HQ-215's or
the last batch of NC-270's. Did National ever make a solid state
radio, other than the HRO-500?

When they turned the lights out at Hallicrafters, were there a batch
of SR-500's in a warehouse that took that last ride to Dayton?

Did people see bins of bare chassis or front panels at the tailgate
sales? Incomplete NCL-2000's?

I'm guessing that the die-off happened about 1970, give or take a
few years. I didn't go to Dayton until around 1980 so I missed it.

I also stopped reading the ham magazines between 1966 and almost
1980.

By the by, I'm here because I have started collecting and restoring
boat anchors. I believe these are valuable collectables and that
in 5, perhaps 10 years, these old radios will be incredibly
expensive. Currently the prices are rediculously low but that is
about to change.

Current prices are low because as hams age and go to the QSO party
in the sky, their prized radios are being dumped on the market,
primarily eBay.

If BPL doesn't kill HF and I don't think it will, not because we
will defeat it but because cable, DSL, fibre to the home, sat, and
Gen-3.5 cell fones will crush the interest in BPL, the proposed
no-code Generals and the almost no-exam entry HF licensees
will double and triple the interest in Ham Radio.

When that happens, everything Ham Radio, especially the historic
radios that have "class" will soar in value.

Even if that isn't a factor, the weird, useless stuff that people
collect, pottery, knick-knacks, wood furniture, carvings, Hummels,
and so on, if an HT-32B appreciates as much as that stuff, it would
be worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Maybe that won't happen but when I can buy a 1960's tube radio for a
couple hundred dollars, it seems like a bargain. Especially when
that radio originally cost two or three times that much.

whatever. Tell me your stories from the die-off.

de ah6gi/4