North Florida Amateur Radio Society
W4IZ Jacksonville FL
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Editor: Billy Williams, N4UF
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BUILDING ELECTRONIC KITS IN THE 50'S 60'S AND 70'S
By Ross Goodall, WD4NJV
During this time period, there were several companies offering electronic kits for the hobbyist. They offered their products by mail order. Allied Radio of Chicago offered Knight Kits, Heath Company offered Heath Kits and Dynaco offered DynaKits while Radio Shack had Realistic and Archer Kits.
Southwest Technical Products as well as Lafayette Radio had several kits. Remco kits were available in toy and hobby stores.Allied Radio in the mid 60's was acquired by Radio Shack and had great growth by opening many stores, both companied-owned and franchised. Lafayette opened stores but could not keep up with Radio Shack's variety of merchandise and number of stores. Allied Radio also had an industrial catalog that had selected items from the regular catalog and a wide range of industrial items.
The Allied catalog was a wish book for hobbyists with parts, audio, test, and amateur merchandise. If you wanted to keep receiving catalogs, you had to order at least once a year or send in a tearout post card from a magazine such as Popular Electronics. Lafayette and Heath each had a store in Jacksonville but couldn't keep up with Radio Shack.
Mail order was fun to do and the mail was checked every day with great anticipation until your order was delivered.My first kit that I assembled was a Remco Kit. It was a one-transistor radio that only picked up the closest AM radio station. For me, it was WOBS 1360 AM in Jacksonville.
Next, I graduated to the Remco broadcaster which had a similar receiver along with a loudspeaker and microphone. But it really didn't transmit as it was just a PA system. Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh got interested in radio using the deluxe model that actually transmitted a short distance over AM broadcast. He has talked about how hard it was to actually key the mike to use it. This model is in the Excellence in Broadcasting Museum.
The next kit that I built was the Knight Kit AM broadcaster which had three tubes (12AX7, 50C5 and a 35W4) which were exposed so one could get burned from the heat on the tubes. I connected a Voice of Music tape recorder and a mike and I covered the neighborhood.
Billy Williams family owned Williams Radio and TV and kept the recorder in good operating condition. Next, I built a pair of Knight Kit walkie talkies. Due to my haste to build, one didn't work and I took it to Bob Nichols, WA4BLQ to find my bad solder joints. I learned the hard way not to hurry and to limit myself to one-hour assembly sessions. The solder was 60% tin and 40% lead with a rosin core.
After an hour of working with rosin core, the kit building area had a great aroma of warm rosin.Heath offered kits that were ready to build and also some that were already built. Heath was known for a 2 and a 6 meter transceiver they called a "two-er" and a "six-er" that some called a "Benton Harbor lunchbox" because they resembled a school lunch boxes. Heath made trainer kits for classroom teaching and even offered a color television kit. The digital display era arrived and I assembled a digital clock and digital thermometer. Both were later taken out by a power surge.
To get people interested in building kits, Heath offered a free soil moisture test kit. Heath had all their kits rated by skill level. They actually had people read the assembly manual and assemble the kits and Heath would check for clarity of the assembly instructions. Errors that were made on assembly were noted so the manuals could be clarified as needed before being released for sale.
Southwest technical products offered several kits. One which I built was an SCA decoder kit that allowed one to connect it to a FM tuner to be able to receive the subcarrier from FM broadcasts which contained Muzak and specialized educational broadcasts. (Today Muzak is all satellite.)Dynaco offered audio kits that had specifications that were comparable to Macintosh audio but at one third the price.
Dynaco had the hardest part of the kit pre-assembled so it was harder for the beginner to make an error in assembly.As tiny integrated circuits made their way into the industry, soldering became more difficult due to tight spaces and the use of heat sensitive components that could easily be damaged caused more assembly problems.
Mass production could be done cheaply and kit offerings declined. Incidently, people who want to reach back in the past that grew up in this era will pay top dollar now for unassembled Knight and Heath kits.
Check your closets and attics.
THE BEST CHRISTMAS GIFT
By Ross Goodall, WD4NJV
Way back in the 1960’s all I wanted for Christmas was a Hammarlund HQ-100. My grandmother had given me an old Philco AM broadcast/shortwave radio but I wanted something better.
Some of my friends had Hallicrafters and Nationals.
I got into collecting QSL cards from AM broadcasters, amateur radio stations from all call areas, next from all states as well as international broadcasters.
Shortwave helped me with geography and Spanish. I experimented with different long-wire and half-wave dipole antennas. I read Popular Electronics to learn more.
Next I built a Knight Kit radio broadcaster and had my own low power AM broadcast station. CB came next followed by my Novice, Technician, General followed by Extra class licenses and a commercial license with broadcast endorsement.
In order to give back to the “greatest hobby in the world” I became a Volunteer Examiner and have helped and encouraged many to get licensed, to pass their exam and upgrade to a higher class license.
This Christmas gift that kept on giving many times over to myself and to others.
COMMUNICATIONS TOUR ON CARNIVAL CRUISE SHIP "FASCINATION"
By Ross Goodall, WD4NJV
On a recent trip from Jacksonville to the Bahamas, I was able to take a behind-the-scenes tour of the ship. The Fascination's home port is Jacksonville. Because of security concerns, only a few people are allowed to go in restricted areas that are not seen by regular ship passengers. No cameras or cell phones were allowed on the tour.
The ship primarily uses VHF and satellite communications. The call sign was posted by each radio along with the channels used in each port. HF is not being used on this ship. There were three radar units being used: one for weather, one to see other ships, and one to see waves and nearby obstructions. Each one of the radar units allowed the officer in charge to click on the image and an id (if that information was being transmitted by that ship) of what the image was and the distance away from the ship in nautical miles.
Wi Fi is available and also telephone at $6.99 per minute on board. All key employees carry cell phones that work on the ships system. Television is received by satellite.
I was impressed at the outstanding level of safety and planning for possible problems that could occur and the many back up system that were in place.
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Editor: Billy Williams, N4UF
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