Heathkit

[W3GMS]

We have all heard the promises of Heathkit coming back with out any details behind that promise.  Well it appears that the new Heathkit has their first TRF receiver kit. 

https://shop.heathkit.com/shop

Others may have gotten the mailing if they are a "Heathkit Insider" 

Dear Heathkit Insider,

“What I really hope Heathkit will produce,” a Silicon Valley colleague recently told me, “is a new radio kit with a beautiful finish, maybe in rosewood.” Something great to enjoy building and learn from, and also visually stunning, so he could put it in his living room and keep it forever.

Today, my friend gets his wish.

Exciting news. More on that in a moment.

It’s been a while since we wrote to our Heath Insiders. We promised not to clutter your email inbox until we had something to say. Here’s a quick summary of what we’ve quietly been doing at Heathkit during the past year: We assembled a terrific team of very talented, hard-working, inventive people. We acquired another company and merged its management, products, assets, and operations gracefully into Heath Company. We ensured we own every last bit of Heathkit intellectual property, to bring you all the manuals, books, vintage designs, and classic logos you love, unencumbered and in perpetuity. We built a company division and acquired a line of vintage add-on designs to sustain the vintage products so important to many Insiders. We developed and integrated our eBay site, so you can buy or bid on auctioned items. We authored and published a helpful Android software app on Heathkit’s GooglePlay site, with more apps to come.

That’s a lot, but there’s more. We’ve designed and developed a wide range of entirely new kit products. We authored the manuals for these kits, complete with the beautiful line art you rely on, preserving and respecting our iconic historic Heathkit style. We developed many new inventions and filed patents on them. We relocated Heathkit, and set up a factory, and a warehouse, and offices, in Santa Cruz, California, near Silicon Valley. We built the back office infrastructure, vendor and supply chain relationships, systems, procedures, operations methods, and well-thought-out corporate structure that a manufacturing company needs to support its customers, to allow us to scale instantly the day we resume major kit sales. All this effort enables us to introduce a fleet of new kits and helps ensure Heathkit can grow, prosper, and continue to bring you great new products for a very long time.

As you can see, we’ve been busy. It takes a lot to bring Heathkit back into the kit business. And we’ve done it.

We’ll have many product announcements coming, but today I want to tell you about our flagship kit.

It’s a simple kit—by intent. We feel an enormous responsibility to respect and maintain the incredible legacy of Heathkit. To us this means, bringing you kits you can build yourself, using our historic renowned Heathkit you-can-do-it “We won’t let you fail”™ approach, yielding working useful appliances so beautiful you’ll be proud to display and use them daily. It also means creating an educational experience that teaches you how they work, and how you can modify or repair what you own.

Further, we feel a very strong commitment to making this experience available to everyone, from 8 to 88 years old. That’s an especially high hurdle. And we’ve done it. The result is the Explorer Jr.™ It’s a simple, beautiful professional-looking little radio. It’s a historic design, made new. It comes in several different colors. You build it yourself. Take it anywhere. When you build it and as use it, you’ll learn to fall in love with radio, for the first time—or all over again. And it’s just the first in a series.

As a Heath Insider, you are special to us. In a few days, we’ll connect www.heathkit.com to our new website where our new products are listed. But you stayed with us through this process. And we want to thank you. So we are giving you, as an Insider, personal advance notice of the new products and new website through this email, before we tell the general public. We want you to know we appreciate your enthusiasm and respect for the Heathkit name and history.

We know that as an Insider, you want to own the first major kit we’ve issued in decades. But please also think about this:

Maybe you have a child, or a granddaughter or grandson, who is ready to start their lifelong love for technology, or who will benefit from the enormous self-esteem that comes from accomplishment. They deserve an Explorer Jr too. (Remember to choose the style they’ll want most—we have six colors). And then, please think about gently helping them build it. You might remember the parent-and-child graphics on the front of so many Heathkit manuals: We can’t count the number of Insiders who fondly remember an adult helping them build their first Heathkit when they were young. What a great way to spend time with someone you care about.

We do not expect initial stock to last long, so please don’t wait to visit our site. Also, please be patient while our new major kit, and new website, go from zero to sixty in two seconds. We might have a few bumps in the road as we scale up, and we appreciate in advance your patience. We’ll work with you to get everything we can right.

We anticipate 30-day shipping time for this week’s orders, and we’ll continue to do everything we can to get all kits ordered this Fall to you in time for the holidays. You can see and order the Explorer Jr. at https://shop.heathkit.com/ now. Please don’t wait to be last: We don’t want to disappoint anyone, but most of all, we don’t want to disappoint our Insiders. Think about whether there’s anyone who would love one of these kits as a holiday present. And thanks for your loyalty and patience as we brought back to you Heathkit’s incredible legacy of the world’s best kits again.

Sincerely,
Andy (President)
and the team at Heathkit 

[RolandSWL]

It certainly would be nice to have some Heathkit projects to work on to pass the winter months.

What would you like to see them come out with?

RSWL.................

[kg7bz]

Site doesn't work.

[W3RSW]

Site worked for me but displayed the wrong pix for the TRF.

Tres interressant.

Hope they last.  ?..and Nixie tubes no less. Wonder what NOS source had them.

[W3NE]

Did I miss something, or is there really no audio level control on that $150 Rx? (Or Volume Control, as we used to say in 1930.)  They have more superlatives than The Donald!

Bob - NE

[kg7bz]

Well, I keep getting the message "ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH" in Chrome or IE. "Site is down"

[WD8BIL]

This wasn't posted April 1st, was it?? 

[kg7bz]

This wasn't posted April 1st, was it?? 

My question too...

[KB2WIG]

"" and Nixie tubes no less. Wonder what NOS source had them. ""

  " Each kit contains all of the parts that you need to convert your AJ-1510 or AJ-1510A FM Stereo Tuner from the original displays over to modern LED displays.  "

Fer the TRF,

"The entire radio is self-contained—no wires, nothing to plug in or tie you down. Just you, your earbuds, and the radio. "

Sensitivity: (TBA — still being measured at the lab)
 Selectivity: (TBA)
 Stability: (TBA)
 Front panel: 2 standard earbud jacks, 50 Ohms nominal
 Rear panel: 1 standard speaker jack, 100 Ohms nominal
 Size: Approx. 3" high x 5" wide x 5" deep (76mm x 127 mm x 100mm)
                       3.25" high (88mm) incl. feet.
 Weight: 1.7 lb (0.67 kg) nominal with batteries

"""

Well, its a tad expensive at $149.00.

klc

[K1JJ]

Gads what a product line...  If they were a publically traded company, I'd short the stock...   

T

[W3GMS]

Did I miss something, or is there really no audio level control on that $150 Rx? (Or Volume Control, as we used to say in 1930.)  They have more superlatives than The Donald!

Bob - NE

I agree Bob.  

They have a order-able product, but the two items in the spec are yet to be determined.  Maybe the volume control is on the back   .

Hey, don't want to be a naysayer, so lets see what becomes of it.  Maybe they will surprise us all!  

Joe

[W3GMS]

This wasn't posted April 1st, was it?? 

I just got the email early this morning Budly, so its current.

Joe
 

[kg7bz]

Well, I'd just like to be able to see the page! I've tried on three different browsers on each of three different computers and always get the same reply that the site is down or unavailable wilt an SSL error or CIPHER mismatch.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Well, I'd just like to be able to see the page! I've tried on three different browsers on each of three different computers and always get the same reply that the site is down or unavailable wilt an SSL error or CIPHER mismatch.

A number of internet hosting providers have tighten a lot of protocols involving SSL within the last several weeks from what I'm told. If you're not running latest browsers, things may not work properly or at all for some web sites.

Try this version of the link:
https://shop.heathkit.com/shop/product/explorer-jr-trf-am-radio-receiver-kit-black-case-gr-150-bk-16

[kg7bz]

Well, I'm running the latest version of Chrome on XP and it doesn't work. However, I finally tried one of my Linux netbooks with Puppy Linux and the SeaMonkey browser and that worked. That browser is several versions old but still worked.  They have something wrong with the site itself. This is the ONLY web site I've EVER had any problems with.

I'm hoping that this is something real. I'd really like to have something decent to give to my grandson, not this cheap crap that's called a "kit" these days.

[kg7bz]

I do have my doubts about this company, this appears to be Data Professionals, the same bunch that supposedly bought up the copyrights to all old heathkit manuals and was going around threatning anybody who had scans online a few years ago. This is why it's no longer easy to find many of the Heathkit manuals.

Their  Facebook page has the last post in December, 2014.

I'm not getting a really good feeling about this...

[N2DTS]

TRF receiver, likely no audio amp, like a crystal set, s no volume control.
Just an RF amp (fet?) run off the 3 volts?

Its over, its done, if you want to build a kit, get an Elecraft K2 or a DZ Sienna.
Nothing for AM though...

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Well, I'm running the latest version of Chrome on XP and it doesn't work. However, I finally tried one of my Linux netbooks with Puppy Linux and the SeaMonkey browser and that worked. That browser is several versions old but still worked.  They have something wrong with the site itself. This is the ONLY web site I've EVER had any problems with.

It might be part of the PCI Compliance that many sites that handle credit cards are now dealing with.

This is just one large service provider. Scroll down to the chart that highlights browser support. I suspect others are doing something similar.
https://wiki.hostek.com/PCI_Compliance#Support.2FUnsupported_Browsers.2FOS.2

[flintstone mop]

Well, I'd just like to be able to see the page! I've tried on three different browsers on each of three different computers and always get the same reply that the site is down or unavailable wilt an SSL error or CIPHER mismatch.

A number of internet hosting providers have tighten a lot of protocols involving SSL within the last several weeks from what I'm told. If you're not running latest browsers, things may not work properly or at all for some web sites.

Try this version of the link:
https://shop.heathkit.com/shop/product/explorer-jr-trf-am-radio-receiver-kit-black-case-gr-150-bk-16

Link worked for me,,,Thanks Pete
It's nice to see that famous logo again. I built a lot of nice audio equipment from them.
Will there be more offerings??

[Pete, WA2CWA]

I do have my doubts about this company, this appears to be Data Professionals, the same bunch that supposedly bought up the copyrights to all old heathkit manuals and was going around threatning anybody who had scans online a few years ago. This is why it's no longer easy to find many of the Heathkit manuals.

Their  Facebook page has the last post in December, 2014.

I'm not getting a really good feeling about this...

There are "copyrights" and there are "copy rights". Two different things. In 2008, he bought the latter. In April 2015, he became part of the group that brought at "bank auction" several years ago all the Heathkit intellectual property, Copyrights, drawings, trademarks, etc.

[KB5MD]

I'll stick to the old 75A4.  It works, has all the features and BAMA IS STILL PERMITTED TO HANDLE THEIR SCHEMATICS!!  I don't care to buy from someone
who is so intent on making money by forcing someone out.  Just my 2 cents!

[Jim/WA2MER]

Let's wait and see where this company goes. Long on flowery language intended to stir nostalgic feelings, yet very short on substance. I'll give them some time to fill in the blanks, but I'm always skeptical of companies whose principals aren't identified beyond sweeping generalities that portray them as people just like us, and whose sole address is a P.O. box. I hope this goes somewhere good, but I've seen nothing that would make me want to send them money, even if I was interested in an AM table radio whose "front panel is Afro-Asian Padauk, hand-milled and rubbed with a special sealing oil."

[AF5J]

Just from the hyped up talk on the webpage regarding the cost of a 1929 receiver " A family AM radio was a big investment — $100 to $625 in 1929 dollars" I looked at this issue of Radio Craft and while yes, some were high. Good quality kits like the Pilot Super Wasp were only $29.50, and that is a kit radio with a volume control.
   last page of the magazine.
  http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Radio-Craft/1920s/Radio-Craft-1929-08.pdf

      At the kit price listed for a bare bones AM radio, if that's the intent,
  for my money it would be my last choice.
 

[Opcom]

Did I miss something, or is there really no audio level control on that $150 Rx? (Or Volume Control, as we used to say in 1930.)  They have more superlatives than The Donald!

Bob - NE

Frequently on high fidelity tuners and other components there is no volume control as it would be on the preamp. Maybe there is an adjustment inside, it is an interesting question.

[K4RT]

I do have my doubts about this company, this appears to be Data Professionals, the same bunch that supposedly bought up the copyrights to all old heathkit manuals and was going around threatning anybody who had scans online a few years ago. This is why it's no longer easy to find many of the Heathkit manuals.

I heard some years ago that an outfit somewhere was threatening hams who sold copies of Heath manuals for boatanchor gear, citing copyright infringement but I don't recall a company name being mentioned.  Perhaps someone signed an agreement with what was left of the former actual Heathkit Co. to buy intellectual property, but what rights they actually acquired may be another matter. As far as I know, Heathkit never policed its copyright or trademark rights, and did not renew copyright registrations (if there ever were any) for manuals for the older gear produced from the 1950s-1970s. Maybe Heathkit would have done so had it taken a dim view of the sale of after-market copies, but I doubt that such copies were widely available until the 80s or 90s when Heathkit was leaving, or had left, the ham radio market.