Any companies still making high-end kits?

Surf over to Ramsey

and take a look at their offerings. Mostly audio/ pro audio and AM/FM transmitters and receivers, but it's pretty good stuff. Not quite what you came to expect from Heathkit in the way of a construction manual, but they ain't bad. I bought and built one of their FM25B FM transmitters and love it. It worked the first time I turned it on, and still working a year and a half later.

--
Dave M
MasonDG44 at comcast dot net  (Just substitute the appropriate characters in 
the address)

Never take a laxative and a sleeping pill at the same time!!

I'd say, generally speaking, NO ... assuming, that I correctly interpreted your post. Lots of kits out there but nothing like the old Heath, Eico, and stuff of that ilk.

Audio:

. . Did you work for Pacific Power Source?

Modern manafacturing methods make it cheaper to buy than make your own, just look at a motherboard for an extreem example.

I'd say the Ramsey stuff, while not up to Heathkit standards, is up to Eico standards, which I built a fair amount of, but again it was no Heathkit.

There is a place in Australia now advertising a lot of stuff, including some kits, but I have not tried it. It is unclear how one handles the import duty thing.

And the cost of that motherboard! Many are cheaper than a dinner for two at a nice restaurant!

Guys, I'm well aware of economies of scale and the low cost of 3rd world labor. My goal is not to buy a kit because it's supposedly cheaper. I derive some value from the act of assembly. I consider it above and beyond the product itself and am willing to pay extra for it and consider it logical to do so. I'll let the couch potatoes who've never seen a soldering iron or o-scope get triple C'd when they buy inferior products.

As a side note: I've had so many problems with imported electronics in 2005, I coined my own term for it -

You get "Triple C'd" when your discount import product fails unexpectedly. (Cheap Chineese Crap)

-John

talking

make

calculator!

John, you could start by opening up the box of almost any modern electronic device. It's mostly surface-mount stuff. No way that you are going to build that kind of stuff in your garage. Sorry, but that's just the way it is.

So, suppose you are a very skilled and dedicated card-carrying rebel and don't care about surface mount technology. You can design your own circuit only to find that the semiconductors that you would like to use (because they are the latest and greatest) are only available in SMT packages ... no leads on those beasts that you can safely touch a soldering pencil to ... there is absolutely nothing about them that supports home or kit building. The SMT boards are built by pick and place robots, BTW.

You are lamenting about progress and you are not alone. Progress is good and evil at the same time.

On Tue, 10 Jan 2006 18:03:01 -0500, "Charles Schuler" used recycled pixels to say:

You bring up some good and valid points! I too miss the days of simple soldering and non-PIC projects! I loved my Heathe Kit Digital Clock when it came as a kit, I was able to assemble it and enjoy it for years on end! Those *were* the days.... sighhhhhh.

Unless you have one of these:

very good links,

the 2 rows of holes are normal stripboard pitch, the chip is a TQFP package PICmicro, 80pin and 64pin, my first attempt at it, all done by hand using nothing more than a gas soldering iron. With a bit of practice you can solder anything by hand, no need to buy a oven ;-)

Chris

I still got my Heathkit oscilloscope that I built back in the days. That was a truly a challenge for me. Still works too.

Ten Tec

has a few kits for amateur radio transceivers.