What killed Heathkit was that the Big Three were able to bring products to market that were cheaper and had more features due to mass production and, in the case of Kenwood, had a contempary and stylish product. Heath did not catch up until the early '80s and by then it was too late. To a prospectvie ham (me) looking at a Heathkit catalog from late 1980/early 1981 and seeing their ham offering that had (at least to me) an early '60s styling to it caused me to look elsewhere until they introduced an up-to-date kit in 1982 or so. That said, I did build an HW-8. But the TS-520/820/530/830 models were certainly attractive to me.
Also, the Big Three owned the VHF FM market early on due to frequency synthesis and memories in a small (for the time) attractive enclosure. Even in performance oriented amateur radio styling plays a part. 73, de Nate N0NB >> -- "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true." Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://n0nb.us/index.html ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
