Build something!
This blog post was contributed by Dan Romanchik, KB6NU, an amateur radio operator for 40 years and an experienced EE.
A couple of years ago, a group of local hams were talking on the club repeater, and the talk got around to building stuff. One of the guys said, “You can’t really build anything anymore.” I almost fell out of my chair. That’s simply not true. There are still many companies out there selling kits that are not only fun to build, but are useful additions to the ham shack. There are even reports that Heathkit plans to start selling kits again.
Here are a couple of sources:
- Elecraft (www.elecraft.com). In my mind, Elecraft has become the premiere ham radio kit company, if not the premiere ham radio company, period. The new K3, for example, outperforms just about anything on the market by many accounts. Personally, I have built the KX-1, which is a real blast to operate from a park bench or to take on vacation. I also have and use the W1 wattmeter.
- TenTec (www.tentec.com/categories/Kits). While perhaps known more for their ready-made rigs, they also sell a line of single-band transceivers and receiver kits.
- QRP Kits (www.qrpkits.com). QRPKits.com sells kits that cater to the QRP crowd, that is hams who like to operate low power. They offer many different radios and accessories.
Below are some other companies whose kits have good reputations, but with which I have no personal experience:
- Small Wonder Labs (www.smallwonderlabs.com)
- Wilderness Radio (www.fix.net/~jparker/wild.html)
- Milestone Technologies (www.mtechnologies.com)
- Ham Gadgets (www.hamgadgets.com)
- Almost All Digital Electronics (www.aade.com/index.html)
- FAR Circuits (www.farcircuits.net)
- Jackson Harbor (www.wb9kzy.com/ham.htm)
- QRPme (www.qrpme.com)
QRP clubs are also a good source of cool kits. QRP operators are natural builders and tinkerers, and many of their designs are quite unique. They also like sharing what they’ve done with other hams. Check out the offering of the American QRP Club (www.amqrp.org), the Four State QRP Club (www.wa0itp.com/4sqrpkitindex.html), and the Arizona SQRPions (http://www.azscqrpions.com).
Ready to rock and roll? Here are a couple Web sites that you might want to check out before you dive in:
- Electronic Construction from A to Z (www.mtechnologies.com/building/atoz.htm). This site includes a page that lists all the tools you’ll need to become a successful kit builder.
- Crystal Sets to Sideband: A Guide to Building an Amateur Radio Station (www.qsl.net/k3pd/book.html). This site not only discusses kit building, but also radio theory.
- The Joy of Kit Building by N6HI (http://members.cox.net/jrehak/wm-2kit.htm).
I hope that I’ve whetted your appetite for building a kit or two. They’re a lot of fun to build, and you really do get a rush from operating a radio or using a piece of test equipment that you built yourself.
If you know of other kit sources, or if you’ve built a kit lately, I’d like to hear about it. Leave a comment below or e-mail me at cwgeek@kb6nu.com.
For more on ham radio, see: Ham radio in the 21st century.
Monte Chaney commented:
Get some tube experience, generate a little smoke and go retro. I live in the midwest in an old neighborhood with lots of estate sales. ( mine isn't all that far away) Got an Admiral 17" 1950 entertainment center (TV, Radio-Am only< and phono) in a beautiful real wood cabinet the wife wanted. Couldn't bear to throw the works away so took the power transformer, Horiz output tube, filter choke etc and have a great 75 watt home built transmitter I would have killed for when I was a Novice back in 1955. All for less than 10 bucks and the wife has the cabinet for her Dynaco tube Amp and Dual 1019 turntable. You don't need a kit, use your imagination and try a few designs that are silicon free. It's OK to use quartz if you have it. Wind your own inductors have some adventures with basic technology. Pre-transistor engineer.....
PJ commented:
The reason I build is to have something that is not otherwise available, or to add functions to an existing item.
Tom M. commented:
All though they don’t make kits, MicroChip.com makes very affordable evaluation boards that allow the advanced experimenter to tinker with a wide range of components in both hardware and firmware.
Steve commented:
Ah, Heathkit. Built many but I was most proud of the GR-1000 27" TV that I built in 1975. It lasted 26 years!
WD6FTE
gah commented:
The problem with building things yourself is that it is hard to do for less than the cost of buying something with way more features.
Even more than electronics, when was the last time you saw a kid build a model airplane? They are still there, but much less popular than they used to be. You can buy already-built models, why build one?
Build Something commented:
WA1GFZ
Still a homebrewer for 45 years.
HPSDR latest project
Ed H. WY9A commented:
Once again Dan, a nice job on the blog. Lots of great resources for kit building and a ton of great suggestions by everyone who commented! Not much else to say except happy kit/diy building to all and happy holidays!
Ed
Son of K2OOB commented:
My dad was K2OOB. I was lighting up tubes with a train transformer when I was 5. They could get pretty bright before they went dark!
My parents got me an Eico 427 scope kit when I was around 11 or 12 for xmas. Built it in about 4 hours. 500 kc bandwidth. It was the best tool to learn about electronics. My dad had built an Eico VTVM so I had that to work with.
That got me going on Popular Electronics projects, mostly audio stuff and I started fixing the neighbors tv's and radios.
We didn't have any hz back then. Lot's of high voltage in that. If you are smart enough to build a kit you're smart enough to understand the words "lethal" and "high voltage" etc. But our society wasn't as litigious as it is today. Prick your finger on strand of wire and sue the kit maker now.
I also had one of the Allied Radio AM Broadcaster kits - low power AM radio xmter and amplifier. I got more involved with the audio stuff at that point and eventually became a professional bassist in addition to designing audio equipment.
I would be offering tube audio kits if it weren't for the liability issues of high voltage.
And yes, nostalgia can be better than reality.
Son of K2OOB
Michael commented:
Having grown up with Heathkit, I really miss them. I now make my own. A few years ago I commented to a friend about the difficulity of finding young engineers with skills in building prototypes and he said --it's easy to explain--Heathkit is out of bussiness. I think that hit the nail on the head. It's good to see interest in building kits return.
Michael WA5VTV
W1IRA commented:
I didn't mean to bad mouth Heathkit in general. Just that it wasn't nessarily the golden days of kit building. We tend to wax nostalgic about the past. And their early products were really quite bad. That said, I have one of their finest Nixie tube frequency counters whose logic I updated about 10 years ago. It is one of the few non calculating counters of any manufacturer that goes up to 200 MHz without any prescalers! Counts to the Hz. It also has a great frequency multiplier that permits you to read FM stereo pilot 19 kHz out to two or more decimal places in near real time.
Stan commented:
Kits are ok, but how about using the noodle and designing something yourself? I do and get way more out of it then soldering a few parts where some paper tells you what and where to put them. That is how things are invented or made even better!
rfjohn commented:
Excellent article and great comments. I build crystal radios, heathkits, and several projects out of Morgan's (??) "The Boys Book of Radio". Recently helped a friend's son build a crystal radio and a one transistor (regen) FM receiver (google it!). The crystal radio was great - initially son and father were unimpressed that the small pile of parts in the kit would amount to anything. When we hooked it up to 100' of wire thrown out a window into a nearby tree, and the local 1300kHz radio station came out the earpiece - you could scrape their jaws off the floor! Made a nice science project, and both learned you REALLY could build electronics yourself! I will need to see what new kits are out there for xmas gifts this year... thanks! 73
Gary commented:
Suzanne, I'm a software guy, but I have felt the urge to learn more about hardware. Building kits and projects will be great for me and my teenage son. Thank you for posting this article, and thanks to the other readers who have offered other sources. I think I'll be buying myself a few Christmas presents this weekend!
Tony commented:
Lots of MPU embedded kits including a PC analog & digital board I use a lot. www.awce.com/gp3.htm
Dan, KB6NU commented:
Someone posted a link to this post on LinkedIn, and one of the commenters there mentioned Kanga US. He has some great kits, too. The website is www.kangaus.com
William Ketel commented:
I have built kits since I was in the fourth grade. Before that I used to wire up arrays of retired Allen Bradley industrial relays to make interesting cadences as they cycled on and off. What I find strange now is this panic-level fear of any voltage higher than 24 volts. In sixth grade I was playing around with arcs using a 12KV neon sign transformer. Did you know that once an arc penetrates glass, the glass conducts? I never got shocked, and was never injured, either. And most of the time thee were not even any adults present. So why all of this intense fear?
Rich commented:
Don't forget SparkFun - lots of kits but no radios.
www.sparkfun.com
RosinSmoked commented:
I think the most important are the very beginner kits, to give kids some understanding of the magic happening inside the things around them. I remember a breadboard kit with springs for interconnecting various solid-state and passive components to build an AM radio and a few other simple circuits.
Les VE7 BLP commented:
The most fun I've ever with electronic kits was when I built the moonbounce radio kit from TAPR (Tucson Amateur Packet Radio). It was a wonderful introduction to SMT and a lot more. It is in a QST article called the DSP-10.
and is not for beginners.
Mark J. commented:
Here are a couple more:
The hackaday and adafruit websites have alot of great projects to centered around Arduino microprocessors.
Radio Shack apparently sells Arduino now as well! People must be getting smarter. I don;t remember STAMP being this popular when I was younger.
W9HZC commented:
There are builders all over the place if you know where to look. Ham radio folks build lots of things including low power stuff. Check www.hpqrp.org for a Nebraska group. also, go look at Make magazine. The links all listed above are great and they will take you to more places. heat up your soldering iron and go for it. Dar..
W4VFZ commented:
In the 8th. grade (circa 1948) I began repairing the "All American Five" radios for local appliance stores, and got my ham license (W4VFZ) in 1952. Although a retired Aerospace Electronics Engineer, I worked at Heathkit during their latter "haydays" (1970s-1980s), and really felt a loss when the ceased the kit business. Now retired, I have a registered web site under development (www.edukit.com) where I hope to market inexpensive kits and educational material oriented for the inexperienced novice. I teach a technical class for future hams, and they build various "projects", including vacuum tube systems. So the interest in kits does exist, we all just have to make everyone aware of them. 73 Alton W4VFZ
grog commented:
another interesting link:
www.eisch-electronic.com
AE7DG commented:
Building circuits today can even be SAFE, compared to the old days. Back in the 60's you started with a 12V (or so) heater supply and then put together a multi-hundred volt power supply for the plate of the tube. Deadly dangerous stuff. Now you can make a hundred watt transceiver with only 12VDC. And digital logic is 5V and less. A safe environment for experimenters. A bit different from a ham who is rebuilding a linear amplifier containing 10 6HF5 tubes with a 1kV 3A PS.
Gerry Jurrens N2GJ commented:
Our QRP club, NJQRP, also has a number of kits - the NUE-PSK modem is great, and their are some new SDR rig kits being offered. 73
bob.c commented:
Some more good news: Heathkit has promised to begin producing radio kits again, and Norcal club site has mentioned starting up kit production again. Some really outstanding qrp goodies have come from Norcal!
wa4mnt commented:
Look at www.qrpbuilder.com
Dan, KB6NU commented:
Thanks for all the great comments, and the suggestions for other kit suppliers.
In the interest of keeping my post brief, I didn't mention the Heathkits that I've built, some of which I still use. My first transmitter was a DX-60B, and when I upgraded to General, I built an HW-101 transceiver.
I still use the IP-2718 triple-output bench power supply that I built many years ago. It's a great supply with one 5V fixed output, and two 0-20V outputs. The cool thing about the two 0-20V outputs is that you can set them up to track one another.
Along the way, I also acquired an IP-2718 HV power supply. This supply was designed to supply voltages for tube circuits. A year or so ago, I acquired several hundred vacuum tubes from the local recycling center, and this supply is just the thing I need to experiment with them.
73, Dan KB6NU
Markus Unread commented:
Here are some more!
www.nerdkits.com
www.goldmine-elec-products.com
dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Main_Page#Projects
oatleyelectronics.com
www.electronickits.com/kit/complete/complete.htm
www.ramseyelectronics.com
www.canakit.com
www.rainbowkits.com
Peter commented:
Great article, thanks!
~Peter KG6JG
w0dz commented:
Don't overlook DZKit (www.dzkit.com), which manufactures the Sienna HF transceiver kit - the only high-end true kit (soldering required) on the planet.
Puzzle48 commented:
Thank-you for writing this. Keep it up. I wasn't aware of so many sources.
My father started me building Heath Kits, which we did together. After that, I continued on my own for years, with kits from various manufactures. I have many fond memories of working with my father.
I think that you can build it yourself, if you are willing to try. IC's (which many of us reading this article help build) only make many things much easier.
I used your links to find something that I needed for some of the radios in the Search & Rescue organization, that I belong to.
Wes KI6VNM
Farmer Pete commented:
It might be news to some, but Heathkit has returned to the kit business. Their first offering is for a garage parking assistant. Just google "New Heathkits"
BERT commented:
OKAY
Dan commented:
I've built Heathkit computers, radios, other brand kits, homebrew stuff out of articles or on my own. I would have fallen out of my chair
Dan - W6LSN
tp commented:
I just helped my son fix his smartphone, it is not easy. Had to find a stereo microscope and a really small soldering iron at the company where I work. Just glad it was a broken flex trace and not a bad component.
John Donovan commented:
Thanks for the links, very useful. I couldn't agree with Dan more, the KX-1 is a lot of fun. And Elecraft is the Heathkit (R.I.P.) of the 21st century.--K6YLG
Lyeal commented:
Unlike one of the commenters I built many ham kits from Heathkit and they worked well and reliably. I still have Heathkit equipment that still is works after many years of daily service.
Andrew commented:
Thanks for compiling these links. I have built several of the excellent Elecraft kits, and am presently building the Norcal 40A. I am counseling several boy scouts through their Radio Merit Badge next month and might include these links in my materials. KF7HB
Tom commented:
Maybe EDN struck a nerve here, become the mainstream electronics industry source for hams? When we hire, being a ham on the resume always gets you in the door for a least a human interview because hams have to be hands-on. KC9PSW
W1IRA commented:
Elecraft kits are indeed wonderful because you end up with an excellent piece of equipment. No comparison to my experiences with early Heathkit gear. My childhood oscilloscope whose parts were mostly war surplus and worked accordingly, with hum galore and somewhat soft CRT. Or the ham radio receiver which I was never able to get to work properly due to bad components.
So, I don't miss the golden days of kit building. Today you can find impressive kits if you look for them, maybe not a console TV but certainly a lot of experimenter items especially in the field of robotics.
niko commented:
I love build it kits, half the price (or Less) and twice as much fun (time wise) I don't get much ham time anymore but the same skills transfer to many other areas. The feeling of accomplishment is bad either.
CK0CIK
Russ commented:
I'm glad to see articles like this. I don't know of any other kit sources but I am sure glad to know about these. We need more articles like this. WB5SMJ
Glenn DeMichele commented:
If you build something, you can also fix it.
This is the best recycling there is.
Ever try to fix an iPhone? Is there anybody on the planet that can fix an iPhone?
Nice job. Glenn, Sigenics Inc. WB9KZD
