Heathkit DIY Kits Are Coming Back 197
donberryman writes "IEEE Times reports that Heathkit, the fabled electronics kits company, is going back into that business after a two-decade hiatus. The Heathkit website says that they will be releasing Garage Parking Assistant kit (GPA-100) in late September followed by a Wireless Swimming Pool Monitor kit. Amateur radio kits may be coming by the end of the year."
I hope for real this time — I never saw for sale the HERO kit they promised a few years ago.
Heathkit - good quality (Score:5, Informative)
I still have a Heathkit multimeter that I built in the late 80's. Still works like a charm. I think I also have an LED clock sitting in a box in a closet somewhere.
I built a lot of their kits as a kid, from shortwave radios to speakerphones. My dad was a ham radio operator and he got me hooked on them. I'd love to see them make a comeback in this arena.
Re:who is their market, any more? (Score:2, Informative)
Are there any Americans left who can soldier, or know the difference between a capacitor and their ass, or can tell you the first damn thing about analog circuits? Don't we all just push buttons with our thumbs on cell phones imported from Asia now?
It seems like the only technically inclined Americans any more are all over 50 or so. The younger crowd knows how to *use* technology, but they don't understand it for shit. This I can tell by talking to young people about their cell phones. They are "magic devices" to them.
Heathkit - they were a product of the times. Sad to say, I can't really imagine them selling more than a few kits to the geezer/nostalgia crowd these days. The younger folks don't want to *understand*. They just want to blindly buy and use.
Check out any number of hackerspaces across the United States - electronics is not just for the over 50 crowd. Examples:
Noisebridge
LVL1
NY Resist (sp??)
I belong to LVL1 in Louisville, Kentucky and we have several high school age kids (boys and girls) who are very active in our group.