What Heathkit did you build?

As a teenager I preferred designing & selling kits than buy & build.

NT

I built most of my electronics from scratch but selling would have caused the Federales to waltz in over there in Europe. Business license, VAT and all that.

Trying to understand the innards of a full-blown transceiver, finding what might be wrong with the build and then fixing it is very educational for a kid. Especially when you do not have access to any fancy lab equipment. Unfortunately that sort of activity doesn't happen with our youth anymore except for a small group in the maker scene.

er

er

great.

k.

There's no such thing as a business license. VAT doesn't apply until an org

It's good to see that some are into it. But arduinos to do the most element ary tasks, please!

NT

I still have my (first day order) PC1 and probably haven't powered it on since '87, or so.

Heathkit PC1? What's that? I couldn't find anything through searches.

Actually it was a FM microphone. No wonder I couldn't find anything when looking for AM. This one:

Anyway I built a Heathkit vtvm in about 1977. I think I had to do it

That was and AFAIK still is very different in Germany. At UKP85k/year you would have to file monthly VAT returns. To be able to fulfill that legal obligation you must have a VAT number, of course, and in order to get one of those you had to have a formal business.

While I do not like Arduino I am still glad that it gets some of our youth onto a tech track. Yeah, they won't be able to build anything with transistors like we do but when the Arduino setup bucks they have to figure out why. That's when a lot of learning happens.

here anyone can register a "small single person company", if you expect mor e than ~6700eur annual revenue or export/import outside EU you have to register a VAT number and do VAT returns every 3 months, if you annual reve nue exceeds ~7M eur you have to do VAT returns every month

Anyway I built a Heathkit vtvm in about 1977. I think I had to do it

I don't remember where the cut-off towards monthly VAT returns was but I had to do them monthly. I remember that they initially balked at issueing me a VAT number. I had to go there in person and show them my university degree which entitled me to qualify as "Freiberufler", loosely translated a freelance engineer who is entitled to practice on his own without the need to belong to some sort of trade organization.

Not a kit (PC1 = IBM 5150), just pointing out that 25 years isn't a long time to hold onto junk.

of old

t for a high school shop class but I don't remember

en I was just kid. It was a long skinny board slid into a clear plastic tu be with perforated endcaps. Ran off button batteries.

ime the UPS truck drove into our yard I wondered if they had my kit. The b ox was pretty beat up but everything was in there.

or more.

Ahh, yes the original IBM PC. I recently saw a Youtube unboxing where the guy purchased a new-in-box IBM AT from someone on eBay (for $500 USD) that had a warehouse of these things. I think that's damn cool, even though I d on't know what I'd do with a 80286.

As a poor middle- and high-school student I couldn't even afford a Heathkit for anything useful (meter, 'scope, generator). However, In the mid 70s I finally bought the colorbar/TV alignment video generator kit (don't remem ber the model number). I used it once, to fix the family TV.

- Tom P.