This episode of HamTalk Live is brought to you
by Tower Electronics. For cables, connectors
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hamstation .com. It's time for ham talk live.
It's episode number 72 Making kit building easy
with Joe Eisenberg k0neb recorded live on Thursday,
July 6th 2017 I'm your host Neil rap WB 9v PG.
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of ham talk
live tonight Joe's back k0neb He's going to talk
about ways to make kit building easy and a couple
of new kits that are out there since he joined
us last. So we'll let him talk about those and
later on in the show we'll let you know when
it's time and we will take your call. So if you
have any kit building questions, please save
those for us. call in during the call -in segment
later on or you can tweet those right now if
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so you can send us those and we'll have those
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We're not sure what's up with the fifth dentist,
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And we're on the air every Thursday night at
9 p .m. Eastern time at hamtalklive .com. And
if you miss us live, well, you can always catch
the archive or our podcast version. Joe Eisenberg
K0NEB is here tonight from Lincoln, Nebraska
and is well known for his kit building expertise.
And he's also well known for his picture shows
of the Dayton Hamvention. He is the longtime
kit building editor at CQ magazine and often
makes presentations and offers kit builds at
ham fest conventions and club meetings and Joe
started ham radio at an early age and has been
licensed since 1969 and The other way that he's
known is his famous dr. Seuss hat that he only
wears to Dayton So, Joe, thank you, as always,
for coming on the show and catching us up on
some kit building. Right, Neil, and there's actually
an exception to the rule on the hat. I wore it
at Friedrichshafen, and boy, the German ham's
really got a kick out of that. And maybe someday,
if I ever get to the one in Tokyo, I'll wear
it there, too. Okay, so there are rare exceptions,
but those are... those are pretty special exceptions
to the rule that's right any other ham fest you
just see me with the ball cap yeah all right
well it's been a while since we've talked about
kits we talked a little bit about hamvention
and we'll maybe throw in a little bit on that
here later but thanks for coming back with another
update so one of the things you said you want
to talk about tonight was ways to make kit building
easier. There are some kits that are easy and
some are more difficult. So give us some tips
to make assembling go better. And first, I'm
going to offer my favorite tip for kit building.
I don't think I've ever told you my favorite
tip for kit building, and that is the styrofoam
plate. Yeah, I've seen people use that and they
poke the parts into that and Or sometimes they
they draw lines on a plate and so forth and sort
out the parts. It's a it's a good idea Some people
use egg cartons, which works too except for sea
moss parts You got to be kind of careful about
those like moss vets and sea moss ICs The two
things that I use the most often Cupcake tin
and I have them that are 612 or 16 cups and Depending
on the size of the kit some kits are very simple
and I can use a 6 -hole or and What I often do
is through a 1 Meg resistor I will ground that
tin so that a CMOS part does not have any static
potential and The other thing I use are trays
out of a tackle box and that way they're reclosable
and the compartments are sizable so I can change
the size of them and what I like to do no matter
what system I use the cupcake tin or the tackle
box tray or sometimes for three bucks or so at
Michael's or Hobby Lobby or Walmart you can get
these jewelry sorting storage things and those
work well as you know as for kit building. What
I do is I put the parts that I use the most often
up in front and that would be resistors and capacitors
and stuff like that that you have the most numerous
of. And then the things in the far back would
be the nuts, bolts, screws, knobs, plugs, jacks,
and connectors. Some things that you might use
first, some that you might use last. But the
key to it is to make sure that they're easy to
get to and the parts fit OK in there without
being bent over or something like that. Now some
kits are stage by stage and those I sort a little
differently like if it has Sections of the kit
where you're doing like a dozen parts at a time
and so forth then I put all the parts for each
section in one bin and That way when I'm done
with that section all those parts should be gone
So those are a couple of the hints the other
main hint I have is The soldering iron is obviously
the most important part of this and I don't recommend
using your $4 to $10 pencil irons that are not
variable temperature because they usually get
too hot or not hot enough when dealing with certain
kinds of connections. So what I really really
recommend is a thermostatically controlled soldering
iron so that you can set it at a temperature
and as you're soldering it draws the heat away
and The soldering iron will then boost up the
power so that it keeps the same temperature Then
when you draw it away instead of overheating
the tip they cool off and stay at the same temperature
You can clean the tip off and put it down for
a while The cheap irons that you just plug in
and they don't have any control at all They're
not really well suited to kit building now. Those
are okay for soldering PL 259s and things like
that and splicing antenna wires, but for a kit
building I wouldn't recommend it. Most of those
also have a tip that's way too big I prefer to
have a tip that's not too much bigger than the
the little circles on the board where you're
soldering the pads and solder the same story.
You don't want the solder to be too thick. And
let me give you a hint. This is the solder I
use. Everybody says, well, Kestner 6040 is the
best. Well, yeah, it's great for PL 259s and
antennas and so forth. But when I'm working on
a circuit board, my preference is 6337, and I
use 031 or 025 thickness. even thinner sometimes
so the sonar and the tip aren't any bigger than
the pad on the board otherwise you might get
blobs and and shorts and so forth that makes
life pretty difficult but I use 63 37 rosin core
no clean and that way you get a much cleaner
connection you don't get the brown blobs of flux
that are left over instead it's whatever's left
might be more clear so Once again, my prescription
for solder is 6337, rosin core, no clean, and
031 or smaller, 025 is good. Now you might say
that's kind of thin, but it really does a good
job and you don't end up getting a lot of big
blobs using that. Now, I'm going to stop you
right there for a second because a question just
suddenly came to mind. got together and picked
out some clock kits for my high schoolers to
do as their first kit and of course they had
to you know put things in the wrong place and
so they had to try to to get that extra solder
out of there and I gave them some choices of
what I had. I had solder wick and I had a one
-handed Handheld spring -loaded vacuum And that
was it so Let me ask you while we're talking
about getting blobs everywhere and if you use
too big a solder and that kind of thing What
do you like to do to take care of the oops? Well,
it depends on the board single -sided boards
definitely solder wick works very quickly. Double
-sided boards, it depends on the diameter of
the holes because those are plated through and
so it's more difficult. If the hole is plenty
big and there's lots of gap between it and the
wire, using solder wick works wonderful. Otherwise,
the best tool and something that you haven't
mentioned yet is a vacuum desoldering tool. And
actually Radio Shack had one that was of the
variety years ago that Would get extra hot it
was a regular pencil iron with a hollow tip and
a suction ball and what you did was you squeezed
the ball to blow the air out of it then you touched
that iron with the hollow tip to the connection
and then you let go of the ball and it sucked
the solder up into the head and then you had
an ashtray or something nearby that you could
squirt the solder back out into to clear the
head of the desoldering tool and it was very
effective about cleaning the holes. But now they
have electric ones But they're kind of expensive
you're going to spend at least about a hundred
and ten hundred and twenty dollars for a Vacuum
desoldering tool that's only if you're going
to do a lot. I would say The wick is probably
the best and I'll give you another hint If you're
trying to steal parts off of circuit boards nowadays
a lot of them are made with lead -free solder
And you'll notice that it doesn't melt real quickly,
does it? That is true. Well, there's a trick.
And what I do is I add some regular 63, 37, or
even 60, 40 solder to that connection. I say,
what are you trying to do? You're adding solder
to something you're trying to desolder. But actually,
adding that solder to it does what? It lowers
the melting temperature to the lowest point.
Then you take the wick and you draw it back and
it comes off nice and clean So that's kind of
another hint now back to the kind of solder I
like 63 37 and I don't necessarily like the silver
bearing type solder just the 63 37 we call that
eutectic solder and the reason is is that particular
mixture of solder melts at a slightly lower point
than the 60 40 But it has a much less plastic
state. In other words, there's only a few degrees
at which it could become crystalline if it got
moved. And so for hand soldering things, 6337
is much better. Now the plastic state of solder,
like I said, is where you get your cold solder
joint. Something moves while it's cooling. But
6337 cools very quickly and solidifies much quicker
and smoother. So anywhere as you go where they're
actually making electronic products by hand,
you're going to see the 6337. In fact, I have
a customer that I visit to service printers right
here in Lincoln and all their bent is have the
6337 rosin core or no clean, which kind of validates
my point on the choice of solder. Sure, sure.
Well, that little difference in the mixture of
the metals does make a big, big difference in
there. And that's a great tip. And again, the
size of the tip and the size of the solder, I
think we've all had those moments when, OK, the
only solder I can find at the moment is You know
a quarter inch thick and okay, maybe not quite
a quarter inch thick But you know, it is this
huge stuff and then you're thinking well, okay,
you know, that's That's what I've got at the
moment and you try it and it just turns into
a disaster Yeah, and I tell people that that
if they're building their first kit if they start
with the right solder and the right kind of iron
they're gonna have more chance of success and
The thing that I've always noticed is if somebody
buys a kit and they fail building it, they're
never going to try and build again. But if they
build something, even something simple like your
clock kit or a pixie or something like that,
and it works, they're going to want to build
something even more complex and so forth until
they're building SDRs. Very good. Well, some
great tips there for Beginners that are trying
to build some of these kits. So you have any
others for us to throw in there? Well, yes A
lot of times the instruction manuals that come
with kits are not printed anymore. In fact, like
if you order a kit from the four states QRP group,
those manuals are not printed. Even MFJ and so
forth, the bigger kit makers, a lot of them also
supply the manuals as a PDF online or a Word
doc, but usually PDF file. And the best way to
handle that is to have a tablet nearby. and you
can use the tablet to read your manual, and then
you can scroll through it. Of course, you can
print it out. Now, when I'm working on a broken
printer at work, my boss always told me, do a
30 or 40 page test to make sure it's good. And
so that's a good chance to print a kit manual.
And so I take advantage of that. That's a good
way to do it. But yes, and you can print it yourself
and kind of make your own little book. Or, like
I said, if you use a tablet now, some people
will pull out a little netbook or a laptop and
do that. That's not a good idea. And the reason
is that when you're cutting wires from the leads
when you're soldering a circuit board, those
little leads go flying. And if one of those goes
into your keyboard, well, you can kiss the laptop
goodbye. It'll end up on my bench at work as
toast. I really recommend using a tablet, a little
cradle for the tablet, and the reason is is that
if those little leads go flying, they're just
going to bounce off the glass. So there's no
problem with a tablet. All right, good stuff.
Well, tell us about some of these new kits that
are out that we haven't talked about yet. Well,
I'm going to talk about the Cricut. And the cricket
is a really, really fun kit. And we did this
as the group build experience at Ozarkon. Now
Ozarkon, if you haven't heard about it, I wrote
about it in the June issue of CQ Magazine. Ozarkon
is the annual gathering of the four -state QRP
group. which is one of the largest nonprofit
groups making kits today. And they have several
people designing kits, but the most prolific
designer lately has been David Kreip, NM0S. For
those of you who aren't familiar with him. He
is a senior engineer at Rockwell Collins in Cedar
Rapids So he is a Collins radio engineer and
he has come up with some absolutely incredible
kits Now the cricket is a 80 meter CW transceiver
and It's kind of based loosely on the pixie design
except for one thing a pixie Receiver is almost
pretty much deaf This one has an MDS, which is
minimum discernible signal at about minus 110
dBm That's pretty darn low. And in fact when
I built my kit and put it together I was able
to hear the w1aw CW practice transmissions and
I I could copy it quite well The signal was very
comfortable and then I unplugged the kit and
I plugged my elecraft kx2 into the same antenna
And guess what? It was only about an S2, S3 signal.
So I thought, wow, that's pretty good considering
I was listening to this 80 meter signal on a
40 meter dipole and with no tuner at all. And
so with this, I was able to hear it quite well.
So it proves out the MDS signal rating. This
particular kit uses a nine volt battery as a
power supply. It has a jack so you can plug in
a headset or earbuds. It has the key. The CW
key is part of the kit and is on the main board.
And it has a BNC jack. So you really only have
to plug in your antenna, your headset. It's already
got the battery on it. Of course, when you plug
in the battery, it turns it on. So you have to
take the battery off to turn it off. Now what's
neat about this kit is there are three inductors
on it. These three inductors are made by a spiral
etching on the circuit board. So you have a Three
inductors that are fixed they're not going to
vary at all You're not going to wiggle them when
they get hot or cold or anything like that They're
not going to vary at all and you don't have to
wind them So you're not winding any toroids or
any coils. You don't need any coil forms or anything
It is built onto the circuit board. So that's
already done for you That's a great audio amp
for audio output. It's really loud in the headset.
I added a three pin It's kind of a machine pin
socket thing that's used on circuit boards and
cutting the middle pin off I made a crystal jack
so that I can substitute different crystals,
but it comes with the crystal that we all know
and love and that is the color burst crystal
3 .579545 MHz and that is the old NTSC television
color frequency and so there's lots of crystals
for that available and that's kind of become
a QRP kit hangout because you don't hear the
noise from the TV oscillators anymore because
nobody has analog TVs anymore. So the crystals
are plentiful and lots of hams are hanging out
up there All right, so that's the the cricket
and and I know you can't hear but I'm playing
crickets in the background for the Well the cricket
the cricket is Offered by the four state qrp
group, which is for sqrp dot org Now we're gonna
we're actually gonna do a little retro here We're
gonna go back and we're gonna look at a couple
of kits that I like because they're classics
Okay, and these classics are put out by MFJ One
of them is under their Vectronics name now. I
don't know if you know anything about the history
of MFJ But the very very first product that Martin
Jew put out was a very simple Scaff type CW audio
filter Okay, and it had three bandwidths 180
Hertz 110 Hertz and 80 Hertz and Filters back
then didn't go that narrow now This design came
up with four ICs in it and Seemed to work quite
well and so he had great success and that's how
MFJ became a success the kit version of the actual
original first product that MFJ ever made and
still uses the same components is called the
VEC -820. And the VEC -820 is available through
MFJ. You'll notice that if you look at the back
panel, the input is two screw lug terminals.
Don't forget that this was designed in the 70s.
So people would have a couple of wires coming
out to their speaker, and then it has a full
quarter inch sized mono headphone jack So you
can plug your headphones in or a speaker coming
out the front It's a slide switch with four positions.
The far right is out, which also turns the kit
off. And then as you move it to the left, it's
180 hertz, 110 hertz, and 80 hertz bandwidth.
And I'm telling you, it is a very stable filter.
And if your receiver isn't stable, you'll know
it when you're using this filter. And it really,
really separates out the signals. Even a modern
DSP receiver sometimes has trouble narrowing
down audio in a CW filter to 80 Hertz and so
amazingly this kit which was designed in the
mid 70s as MFK's first product is still extremely
useful now obviously you can customize it you
can change the plug to jacks and so forth But
it's an absolutely wonderful kit, relatively
low cost. In fact, you can buy it without the
case and put it in your own box if you want.
All right, very good. And we need to get to break
here, but you've got one more? Yep, we sure do.
All right. Go ahead and do that one quickly,
if you would. All right. Well, we're going to
talk about the MFJ World Band Shortwave Radio.
This is another classic kit that's actually been
around for at least 20 to 30 years It's the MFJ
8100 and it is a single -sided board The parts
are spaced quite a ways apart, so it's easy to
build for a first -time builder. The thing that
it teaches you is that on a single -sided circuit
board, you do have to have jumper wires from
time to time, and this one has four jumpers on
it, but they come pretty much pre -cut, although
some are a little long, so you can trim them.
It has two headphone jacks, so you can listen
along with a buddy. It runs on a 9 -volt battery
that clips to the main board. and hooks to the
antenna and ground and it is a regenerative general
coverage shortwave receiver and of course it
does favor the ham bands and it's kind of an
interesting lesson in one of the hints I like
to give at my seminars and that is have a reference
receiver handy because when I put it together
and I plug it into the antenna I could hardly
hear anything at all and I thought oh boy I really
messed up till I turned on my general coverage
shortwave receiver that was next to it, hooked
it to the same antenna, didn't hear much either.
Well, it turns out that the band was dead, so...
And the bands are never dead these days. Never.
Oh, gosh, no. Gosh, no. No. So, so... Conditions
were pretty rugged as, as attested by my failure
so far to get to GB 13 COL. I was just getting
ready to say the exact same thing. I've got everything
else, but I cannot hear GB 13 COL to save me.
Yeah, if I could hear him, I'd be all right.
But the guys on the East Coast got lucky, but
us in the Midwest are kind of handicapped this
time with the band conditions. But this receiver
here, I had it on 80 meters last night, and it
worked just wonderful. So if you wait a couple
days or a day or so, or even a few hours, try
it again. The conditions might be a lot different.
And in fact, they were. And so I was listening
to Radio Havana Cuba and WTWW and WWCR on shortwave
and hearing WWV and all the other signals that
make shortwave the bands that we know and love.
It is a regenerative receiver, so of course you
got to learn how to tweak the regeneration control.
And the antenna and ground connections are as
easy as they get. It comes with the case and
a separate front panel that gets bolted on and
absolutely looks professional when it's done.
I finished it up last weekend and wrote about
it for the magazine because I like writing about
these classic kits. These kits have been around
20, 30 years or more. they obviously are around
that long for a reason because they work and
this one has a vernier tuning capacitor so that's
kind of unique a lot of kits nowadays that have
a regen receiver just use a tuning capacitor
that's not geared there is one toroid to wind
in this one but don't be afraid of it the wire
comes Already cut and trimmed although I did
need to shorten mine a bit when I soldered it
to the board It's an eight turn toroid and instead
of using enameled wire which is kind of hard
for a first -time kit builder it uses just regular
insulated wire and The wire is already tinned
and everything and absolutely goes together very
easily. If this was the first toroid a kit builder
would wind, I'd say that would get you started
on not being afraid of winding toroids. All right,
very good. So that's coming up in CQ Magazine.
Look for K0NEB's kit building column there. And
we'll be back and give you a chance to call in
and ask your questions right after this from
Tower Electronics right here on HamTalk Live.
This episode of HamTalk Live is brought to you
in part by Tower Electronics. Tower Electronics
has been the Ham's Dime Store since 1978. When
you need connectors, mobile and handheld antennas,
cables or adapters, visit Scott or Jill at a
HamFest near you. Or you can order online at
PL -259 .com or call 920 -435 -2973. Stock up
on those supplies like PL -259 and end connectors,
SMA adapters, audio cables, soldering supplies,
mobile antennas, and hamsticks. Their silver
-plated end connectors are even used on the International
Space Station. Tower Electronics carries MFJ,
Comet, Daiwa, OPEC, Workman, and HamPro products.
And don't miss their 0 % off sale going on now!
Tower Electronics, online at PL -259 .com, proud
to sponsor this episode of HamTalk Live. Your
QTH or mine? You're listening to HamTalk Live
with Neil Rapp. Join the conversation. Call us
on voice with Skype at HamTalk Live or give us
a call at 812 -NET -HAM -1. That's 812 -638 -4261.
Now, here's more HamTalk Live. Thanks again to
Scott and Jill at Tower Electronics for sponsoring
the show once again and they'll be at the Oak
Creek, Wisconsin Ham Fest on Saturday. And then
they're going to take a little break, spend some
time with some family, and then they'll be back
on the Hamfest circuit in August. But you can
always give them a call. It's 920 -435 -2973
or pl -259 .com. So make sure you check that
out. And I know Joe loves to get his parts from
them. Yes, I do in fact one of the hints I like
to give kit builders is to always have the right
plugs jacks and connectors handy so that you
can make your connections to your kits and Scott
and Jill from tower electronics has the greatest
selection of plugs jacks and connectors and adapters
and So forth that that I ever see and so they
always know they're going to get a visit from
me every ham fest I see them In fact, one of
the pictures we sent out on Twitter and Facebook
and Instagram promoting the show tonight is you
at the tower electronics booths. We got a picture
of all the connectors and plugs and everything,
so we'll thank Scott for using the picture. Well,
let's take some calls here. We kind of skipped
over a bunch of stuff here. We can talk all night.
Let's take some calls here. The number is 812
-NET -HAM -1. 812 -638 -4261. Or you can Skype
us. We're HamTalk Live on Skype, and we're also
HamTalk Live on Twitter. So if you'd rather tweet
to us, you can most certainly do that. In fact,
let me check the tweets here. So if you have
a kit building question or a question about one
of these kits that Joe's talked about or some
other kit, well, give us a call. It's 812 -638
-4261. That spells net ham one. And we'll get
you in here. Okay. And Jill says we may be, Jill's
listening and says maybe breaking up a little
bit. And I heard a little bit of stuff on your
side too, Joe. So I'm not sure what's up with
the internet tonight, but we'll keep trying to
go through it. And while we're waiting on the
calls to come in, again, 812 -NET -HAM -1, 812
-638 -4261. Great job on the picture shows. Yeah,
the the good news on my internet service is the
about six blocks away They're starting to trench
for fiber and once I get that I'll have a gigabit
up and down and that's gonna be wonderful, but
The slide shows I've been doing photos at hamvention
since my very first trip in 1975 when I was armed
with an eight millimeter movie camera and a Kodak
Instamatic we've gone from there and now of course
obviously high -resolution digital photography
and what I do because I make a lot of presentations
to local clubs and hamfests around here about
Dayton is I make it more entertaining than sitting
there and putting up a picture and talking for
20 minutes. What I do is I have these slideshows
that run about four minutes and they're set carefully
to music and the photos go with the words of
the song and they try to follow a theme somewhat
related to the theme of the song. Like I have
one that uses the song freeze frame and of course
the theme of that slideshow is photography. So
you see a lot of people with cameras taking pictures
just like I do. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is
obviously about women in amateur radio. This
year's theme was the new location. And so I used
Styx, The Grand Illusion, which actually came
out even a lot better than I thought it would.
And it starts out with the opening ceremonies
with the honor guard from Wright -Patterson Air
Force Base. And we go from there and we show
all that was wonderful about Hamvention. Then,
of course, I made another one called The Show
Must Go On, which showed the mud and the other
interesting things that made going to the Green
County Fairgrounds a lot different than the experience
we had at Hair Arena. And I'm really, really
looking forward to the improvements in the future.
But to let people know, to make a typical slideshow,
I probably shoot 400 to 500 or more photos. Which
a handful get into these slideshows and I throw
pictures at you every four or five seconds and
so those images kind of get etched into people's
minds by locking them in with the The words to
the songs. In fact, I have a lot of people that
come up to me when I show up a date and sing
What song are you going to destroy this year?
When I when I when I first heard that I thought
well, that's awful thing to say and they said
well It's because every time I hear that song
on the radio those pictures come into my mind
and I it reminds me I really want to go to Hamvention
I said well then that means I'm really doing
my job and that is as kind of the official photographer
for the Dayton Hamvention All right eight one
two six three eight four two six one is the number
and dr Scott right tells me that I'm breaking
up and you're not which you're going through
here, so not sure what's going on but what we'll
do is after the live broadcast we'll upload the
local version so hopefully that'll clean all
that up so 812 net ham one is the number we just
have a couple of minutes left if you'd like to
get a question in here for Joe about some of
the kit building stuff, and I know Jill's listening,
and we did a little research here on Monday,
and we found the Cheesecake on a Stick people,
and we're trying to get them back to hand -vention.
We're trying to get that all worked out, so...
We've been tracking down who did what and so
we'll have some more news running out of time
to talk about tonight, but We're working on it.
I found it So well, that's great. I know that
was one of the That was one of the ham fest traditional
treats that a lot of people were asking about
this year and I still don't have any complaints
about the food at Zenia because It was obviously
there was a lot of fair food, but it wasn't your
cotton candy as much as it was really good stuff
and I think that they did a great job. I think
they're already talking about having a food tent
for people to eat undercover because as we saw
it does rain from time to time and There's going
to be even more food vendors because the food
vendors there were doing great business, but
the problem was is that they were doing such
a great business that it took a long time to
get through the lines. So I am really looking
forward to even more food vendors. None of the
vendors that were there this year were disappointed
at all in the business that they did. In fact,
most said that it was much busier than the county
fair. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. And yeah, I thought
it would. pretty well but yeah the lines were
long for some items especially so that'll be
interesting. Now while we're talking about Dayton
and I know this isn't going to do it justice
with a minute and a half but how did FDIM go?
FDIM went great of course it was at the same
location it has been for several years at the
Holiday Inn in Beaver Creek so it was fortuitous
for them that Hamvention moved to Xenia because
it cut in half the amount of time it took them
to get to the ham fest instead of going clear
across town to Hararena and it went really well
and we made a kit that was the it was a crystal
tester and it is basically a crystal oscillator
with a frequency counter on it and you could
touch a crystal to the two pads and it would
tell you exactly what frequency that crystal
was on. And he sent out calibrated crystals to
each person that were exactly counted so that
afterwards at home, you could touch that crystal
to it, adjust the trimmer cap so that it shows
that exact frequency. And now it's exactly calibrated.
And I've been using mine quite a bit for checking
crystals to make sure they're working. All right.
Very good. We are just about out of time, but
CarlCandy9HQT wants to know if you've used HeathKit,
and I know the answer to this is yes, to assemble
transceivers and audio analyzers, and unfortunately
we're going to have to cut it off there because
we are out of time, but I'd say the answer is
yes. Yes, yes. Many years ago I certainly did.
Yeah, and HeathKid always had the best instructions
of anybody, I think. Absolutely, by far. Ellicraft
now does, too, as well as DZKit. DZKit does,
as well. Very good. Well, that's a wrap for another
edition of HamTalk Live. Thanks again to Joe
Eisenberg, KZeroNEB, and everyone out there in
cyberspace for listening. Chatting online tonight
and we'll invite you all back next Thursday night
at 9 p .m. Eastern time We've got several guests
lined up for the next month or so But we're kind
of juggling the dates around so I don't have
exactly who's gonna be at which date yet But
you can check that out the latest revision of
the schedule is on the link at hamtalklive .com.
Just click on the show schedule link. So for
now this is Neil Rapp, WB9VPG, saying 7 -3, 7
-5, and may the good DX be yours.