RadioBanter - View Single Post

July 1st 04, 02:42 PM

"No Spam " No wrote in message news:ifgU75G3LLdo-pn2-6dc5RepOHFeN@localhost...
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.

Here's what I saw:

Byt the mid-1960s there was a wide selection of US-made ham gear, new,
kit and used. Surplus was still all over the place and dirt cheap. If
you knew where to look for parts, homebrewing could be done easily.

Heath stuff was OK but not in the same league as Drake or Collins.
Drake was the poor man's Collins, Heath was the poor man's Drake. Swan
was in there someplace but opinions varied widely on it, and no
serious contester or DXer used Swan stuff. Hammarlund, Hallicrafters
and National were still in business but not nearly so popular as
Collins/Drake/Heath/Swan

There were a few Japanese imported rigs, but they were generally
considered to be inferior. Some were disguised - most Lafayeete stuff
was "imported", and the popular Henry 'Tempo One' was actually a
rebadged Yaesu FT-200.

All this may seem like BA nirvana but there was one big problem: Very
few rigs did everything well.

What I mean is that most rigs lacked basic features that we take for
granted today. Consider the SB-100 - nice SSB rig, 100W, 80-10. Pretty
good on SSB. But it had no provision for a sharp CW filter, no RIT,
and no AGC off/slow/fast choice. No processor or noise blanker,
either. The later SB-101 and -102 added the sharp filter option but
kept the other problems.

Now if you spent the money for an SB-300/400 pair, you could have a
sharp CW filter and AGC selection, plus independent control of
transmit and receive freq. But no transceive-with-RIT, no processor,
no noise blanker, and you had two boxes and their interconnecting
cables.

Similar problems dogged almost all other makes and models. There was
always something left out that could have been easily incorporated,
but wasn't in the designer's vision.

Most of the ham gear outfits were not as big as we hams like to think.
In the case of Collins, ham gear was a sideline that existed in large
part because Art Collins wanted it that way. Heath sold far more
non-ham kits - we were just one division.

Most of the big names were still being run by their founders. These
folks were getting on in years by the 1960s.

Then in the '70s 'serious' Japanese ham gear began to appear. Yaesu's
FT-101 and the Kenwood TS-520 families showed up with lots of desired
features all in one box, at a reasonable price. They were almost all
solidstate, too.

What American-made setup of the time could compete with a TS-520S? It
was a 100W transceiver that covered 160-10 plus WWV. Optional CW
filter, DC supply and external VFO. AGC switch, processor, fan for the
finals, RIT, etc., etc. All in one receiver-sized box.

Heath and Drake at least tried to compete. But the Japanese had the
advantage of a head start, plus a favorable exchange rate and cheaper
labor.

Heath had the double whammy that their designs could not require
serious test gear for alignment.

The result was that the hams who bough new gear bought so much
Japanese-made and so little American made that the bottom fell out.

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.

Three reasons:

1) It's hollowstate

2) It sounds pretty good as-is, and even better with a few mods.

3) It is well documented and easy to modify.

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

I could give you a pile of reasons for that, but it all comes down to
one thing: What constitutes "better sound" is purely subjective.

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.

They're also 30 years old. When I built my HW-2036, the parts looked
tiny. Now they look huge.

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

They did not/could not keep up with the competition.

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.

Wayne was and is full of it.

Japan has had no-code-test ham radio since 1952, when their government
took over the licensing from the occupation government. They got away
with it because of some creative interpretation of the treaty.

They have never had "low barrier" licenses - their written tests are
and were quite involved. Licensing beyond the 4th class required code
tests in both International Morse and Katakana.

While other factors contributed to the die-off, there is no question
that Wayne called it exactly right.

I disagree.

Remember in the 1960's, there
was essentially no Japanese amateur radio gear imported, except for
that mechanical key and maybe code practice oscillators..

Not true. Lafayette was importing ham/SWL receivers from Japan in the
'50s. Allied did the same somewhat later.

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 really happened was that Japan was devastated by WW2, but began a
longterm process of rebuilding everything. It took some years before
they got to niche things like ham gear.

Post WW2 Japan did not get involved in big military spending, a space
program, or foreign entanglements. Their focus was on rebuilding their
country and becoming a world economic and industrial power. Once the
basic industries and infrastructure were rebuilt, they focused on
specific areas like consumer electronics because such items are
relatively small and high-value. And because so much of their pre-1945
industry had been destroyed, everything was relatively new compared to
US industry.

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?

See above. Their managements reached retirement age and the required
investments in new designs were not made.

Some designs were simply not that good, too. Compare the NCL-2000 to
the Drake L-4B or even the SB-220. The latter are more rugged, less
fussy and use cheaper tubes.

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?

Some of that. Usually, however, the way it worked was that the last
batch was sold off and then there were no more.

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.

The ads alone tell the story. Collins hung on the longest, I think,
making the KWM-380 because it was part of the deal when Art sold the
company.

Ten Tec apeared in 1968 making little QRP rigs and just kept on
growing. Look at the Orion...

Signal One came and went, but was a factor in "paradigm shift" about
ham rigs.

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.

Not compared to what they used to be in the '70s, '80s and very early
'90s. That was a "golden age", in a way. 'Nobody' wanted tube stuff.
You could get all kinds of gear and parts at hamfests for a song.
Examples:

- Working SX-101A in good condition - $35
- Very clean, almost mint working Viking 2 - $35
- Viking Valiant that needed the VFO dial coupling replaced, otherwise
working and good shape: $25
- Unmodified clean ARC-5s - None more than $10. Often a whole batch
for $10.
- Unmodified clean working BC-342-N - $2 (Not a typo - two dollars)
- QSTs back to pre-war: Dollar a year
- Receiving and small transmitting tubes - $1 each NOS, less for used
- I-177 or Hickok 6000 tube tester with book - $10
- 75A-4 receiver, VGC, working, with all mech filters, reduction knob,
book, spare tubes, just aligned - $250

I could go on and on but you get the idea. I didn't get all of these,
but I saw all of them at various 'fests within 2 hours of
Philadelphia.

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.

That was going on 20 years ago, too, only it was at the 'fests.

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,

I hope you are right!

the proposed
no-code Generals and the almost no-exam entry HF licensees
will double and triple the interest in Ham Radio.

Maybe, but I doubt it.

The requirements for a ham license have been dropping since 1975. They
were radically reduced (both written and code) again in 2000, but we
have not seen lots more new hams. There are a bunch of reasons, but
I'll name just three:

1) Antenna restrictions
2) Free time doesn't come in big blocks for a lot of folks
3) You are looking at it.

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

That started 10+ years ago.

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.

But it won't because the market for an HT-32B is far smaller.

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.

Even more when you adjust for inflation. A 75A-4 in 1959 cost about
$700 - back when $5000 a year was a really good middle-class income.

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

Just did.

And if you want to see what ham kitbuilding has become, check out
Elecraft.

73 de Jim, N2EY