On Sun, 08 Jul 2007 04:05:18 -0700, kh wrote:

On Jul 8, 4:17 am, Doug wrote:

A transceiver that I believe actually sold in greater numbers than the
KWM2 series was the lowly Heathkit HW101. I know that they sold over
20,000 of them.

For it's price, if you can get one that was well assembled, you can do
no better. The HW101 was almost as stable as the KWM2, was FAR better
on CW with true carrier insertion, sidetone, vox that worked well and
an optional CW filter.

It's more expensive big brother was the Heathkit SB101 or SB102, the
poor mans copy of the Collins KWM2.

What a thing to consider! The KWM-2/2A cost between five and ten
times what the HW-101 and SB-100,101,102. did. The prices of all
three lines varied over the years but at the end, the Collins was over
$3,000 and I don't think the SB's ever went over $400. $299 sticks
in my mind for the HW-101.

What do you mean by "What a thing to consider"???

My point was exactly that for their prices, a well built
HW101/SB101/SB102 performs almost as well as a Collins KWM2 on SSB
and far better than the Collins on CW.
Thus in terms of their value based on cost versus performance, one can
easily argue they outperform the Collins.

As for the Drake radios, I don't like tube radios that really need
matched pairs or trios of sweep tubes to maintain performance,
especially when the supply of such tubes is rapidly vanishing.
My National NCX3/5's seem to be relatively unfussy about whether the
6GJ5 or other sweep tube used are matched.

Another great thing about Heathkits was that they used 6146 tubes in
their finals, just like the Collins.

As for Heathkit build quality, like most things, you have to try
before you buy. One that is working well on a bench today has
certainly gotten all of its bugs worked out it by this time, with only
normal age related failures to be expected.

I agree with another that the Kenwood TS820/830 series is far more a
solid state than a tube rig. I had a TS-820S - thought it was a rather
poor performer. Its CW semi-breakin operation was miserable. A
transister went bad in one of the mixer oscillators. It's layered,
non-plug-in circuit board construction made service access difficult.

Doug/WA1TUT