The AM Forum

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 

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.................

Site doesn't work.

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.

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

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

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

My question too...

"" 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

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

T

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

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

Joe
 

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

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.

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...

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...

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

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??

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.

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!

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."

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.
 

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.

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.

I just called their listed telephone number. At no time was Heath or HeathKit spoken. Very shady, I think this is a well presented scam.

Here is another interesting question: Where is this receiver's tuning dial?

Could it possibly be the receiver is so broad a dial is unnecessary, just as it is so insensitive no audio level control is needed? We will have to wait for publication of those phantom TBD specs to find out.

As for schematics, The Real Heathkit Company published schematics (as did Johnson) right on the catalog page describing their product. They could do that knowing the kit price was so low that it would be uneconomical for anyone to buy components for a knock-off. That's not exactly the case with this "Heatkit."

Incidentally, thanks for the photo of T-mom!

Bob - NE

Judging from the one photo that shows a single-gang variable capacitor and what looks like a TO-92 or two package device, I'd bet that it's using a TA7642 (http://www.petervis.com/Radios/ta7642/ta7642-am-radio-ic.html) TRF radio IC. You can buy 100 of these for about $6.50 including shipping on ebay (http://www.ebay.com/itm/281757753971?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT). The typical circuit used would explain the lack of volume control.

I built radios a couple decades ago with it's predecessor, the ZN414. It's a neat chip, but no radio with it is worth $150!

Here's a good post about building radios with it.

A Well Behaved MK484 - or -TA7642 Radio (http://theradioboard.com/rb/viewtopic.php?t=2791)

You have some good points there. The reference post is very informative, but when looking for AM DX, having to set critical d-c adjustments to optimize performance would certainly detract from the main objective. An "Automatic Gain Control" voltage requiring manual adjustment within 50 mV. is an oxymoron. No doubt an avid experimenter could derive considerable enjoyment with a receiver as described, but paying $150 for the privilege to do so makes it pretty expensive fun. The performance variables introduced by "AGC" adjustment also explain why "Heathkit" lists BW and sensitivity specs as TBD. Indeed!

Thanks for shedding some real light on what is probably going on here.

Bob - NE

Copyright is really complicated. I'm a professional librarian and I still have to call a lawyer, but anyway...this text below is from the copyright office.  Please note that for items copyrighted between 1950 and 1963 -- if the copyright was not renewed -- the protection was lost permanently.  This period covers a majority of the "important" Heath products -- DX-20, DX-40, etc.

This is why I have been dubious about these claims by people that they "own" the copyright to the Heath manuals and insist that places like Bama don't post them.  I have never seen any evidence that the copyright for Heath manuals was renewed in 1978 -- if not the heath manuals would seem to be in the public domain.

Of course our chances of the present "owners" of Heathkit answering this question are pretty slim.


Mandatory Renewal
Works originally copyrighted between January 1, 1950, and
December 31, 1963
. Copyrights in their first 28-year term on
January 1, 1978, still had to be renewed to be protected for
the second term. If a valid renewal registration was made
at the proper time, the second term will last for 67 years.
However, if renewal registration for these works was not
made within the statutory time limits, a copyright originally
secured between 1950 and 1963 expired on December 31 of
its 28th year, and protection was lost permanently.

People still have problem understanding the term "copyright".
There's several ways you can use the term.

What most people perceive:
As a verb: "Secure copyright for material" As an originator, so people can't steal your material. Prior to 1978, you had to file a "notice of copyright" with the U.S. Copyright office. After Jan. 1, 1978, filing was no longer required to secure copyright distinction. Your document just required the copyright symbol, ©, and a date or the phrase copyright-date.

The one that people forget (or don't comprehend):
As a noun: the exclusive legal right, given to an originator or an assignee to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material, and to authorize others to do the same.

As an example, when you as the originator give permission to replicate part or all of some specific work to another party, you as the originator give them a copy right (i.e. right to copy). In simple terms, you as the originator, have given them a copyright.

Back roughly, 1993-1994, Heathkit started a vintage manual replication business under what was left of their original business. As part of Heathkit, they were the only true authorized supplier of manuals since they didn't give permission to anyone else. In 2008, they decided to sell the business, all inventory, and all rights and privileges. In May 2008, I was offered a chance to buy it but I gracefully declined. The business then was posted on Ebay three times, but they couldn't get the offer they were looking for. In roughly September 2008, the new current owner made them an offer which they accepted. In October 2008, the contract to sell was signed and finalized by both Company presidents and filed in each of their respected states. As the new owner, you also had the right to assign or authorize certain rights and privileges to others. In roughly 2012, Heath filed for bankruptcy and all assets (intellectual property, copyrights, inventory, etc.) were sold. Some time thereafter a new Heathkit Company arose (i.e. we're not dead). In April 2015, the current owner of Heath's manual replication business became part of this new Heathkit.

Most of this information has been rehashed numerous times (too many to count) on forums, boards, and other places over the last 7 years.

I continue to have an uneasy feeling about this entire campaign.

Too many vague and unstated points.  A "product" without basic specs, extremely high pricing, odd design details.

Three years into this campaign, only a first name of the president/CEO is offered.  No names of vaunted 'advisors', no location of operations, etc.

This continues to feel like a broad hoax.

So why hasn't Data Pro / Peterson / the new Heathkit taken legal action against Tubular Electronics? Almost 3 years since the original threats were made.

Its apparently not such an open and shut case? The real lawyers must kmow more about all the issues than some of the amateur attorneys.

Al VE3AJM

my antivirus program pukes on the website. 

Here is the link to the Heathkit Sale Agreement I found posted on the Tubular Electronics website:

http://tubularelectronics.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Agreement-wo-Price.pdf

Anyhow home-brewing is becoming popular again.  It is often referred to as being a 'maker' now.  I was surprised to see a couple of years ago that there are hobbyists building high power chemical dye lasers.  So high tech and high power hobby stuff is not just being done in the electronics and radio transmitter domain.