Thoughtful Copypasta

In which I copypasta from myself…

So there was honestly one thing I really loved with Heathkit… The products were okay, but it was the documentation and the build process.

When you started building a Heathkit product, the instruction manual would guide you through not just building the device, but building the electronic system. You’d start with one part, say, the power supply, and the instructions would explain to you how it worked and what you were building would do, and how to perform any needed adjustments. Next it’d take you to another module of the device, say, an oscillator – how that worked, how to peak and test it, and how it would work with the next module of the circuit. By the time you were done, you not only had a device sitting in front of you….. but you knew how it and each functional block of it worked.

It provided a more or less unmatched hands-on learning experience.

There are other manufacturers of electronic kits out there, but none have ever matched the quality of education they provided in my opinion. On some products, Ramsey Electronics came close, but they sadly bowed out of the market.

I didn’t originally say this but it made me MAD when I purchased some Vellemann kit, a NiCD/NiMH battery charger they used to make, and it contained instructions only as to how to physically assemble the dumb thing. NO!!!

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