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Vintage Heathkit SA-2060A Deluxe Antenna Tuner Kit
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Featured Product Archive The inventions and products featured on these pages were chosen either for their uniqueness in the RF engineering realm, or are simply awesome (or ridiculous) enough to warrant an appearance. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | Heathkit catalogs can be found at World Radio History and Heathkit Catalogs. Heathkit manuals can be downloaded for free here. These are the kits for which I have photos: Heathkit IM-104 Solid-State Voltmeter Heathkit HW-5400 SSB HF Transceiver Heathkit HM-1002 RF Power Meter My Heathkit ET-3100 Design Experimenter Heathkit GR-48 AM/FM Table Radio Kit Heathkit DG-140 Two-Station Intercom Kit Heathkit HD-1481 Remote Coax Switch Heathkit AR-1250 Stereo Receiver Heathkit GD-1380 Video Game Pong Heathkit IG-5257 TV Post-Marker / Sweep Generator Heathkit SA-2060A Deluxe Antenna Tuner Heathkit IM-2400 Hand-Held 512 MHz Frequency Counter Heathkit IM-2420 Benchtop 512 MHz Frequency Counter Heathkit HW-9 QRP Transceiver Heathkit CR-1 AM Crystal Radio Receiver Heathkit HW-99 Novice CW Transceiver Heathkit SA-5010 uMatic Morse Code Keyer Heathkit GD-1114 Intercom Speaker System Occasionally an unbuilt vintage Heathkit item appears on eBay with really nice photos of the contents. In fact, I have a Saved Search that sends me an e-mail whenever one shows up. Recently, a Heathkit SA-2060A Deluxe Antenna Tuner kit appeared. It tunes the entire 160 to 10 meter range. Dual wattmeters measure forward and reverse power. The guy who listed it says, "These tuners are the apex of the Heathkit tuner kits; I already have a built one and it's my main tuner in the shack. Full legal limit 1500+ watts (I have read they will take up to 2000 watts) across the HF bands, roller inductor tuner... Original cardboard box is stamped with a manufacture date of 1989." This is a manual tuner with lots of mechanical parts as well as electronic parts. Take a look at all the dial and knob extender shafts, standoffs, mounting brackets, and attachment hardware. Wouldn't you love to have something like this to spend a few hours assembling? Per the 1987 Heathkit catalog, the SA-2060A was priced at $269.95 ($639.67 in 2021 money per the (BLS Inflation Calculator). That is not too far off the price for a contemporary 2 kW tuner, such as the Palstar AT2K (6 to 160 meters) retailing at $595.99. Heathkit products were well known for the completeness of its instruction manuals, with clearly illustrated instructions. During the writing and editing process, Heathkit employees were given pre-production kits to take home and build, while annotating any difficulties or errors encountered. Doing so helped minimize the situation where the writer inadvertently assumes his own familiarity with the process is shared by the customer. Having built a few Heathkit products myself in the 1970s when I did not have a lot of experience with electronics assembly, I can attest to the user friendliness of the instructions. Heathkit stills sells many of its vintage manuals for around $15, which is what you would pay on eBay.
Contact Info Heath Company (Heathkit) Operations: PO Box 15, Ottsville, PA 18942 R&D/Mfg: PO Box 3115, Santa Cruz CA 95063 Phone: +1 (831) 480-4368 E-Mail: info.2015@2015.heath.company
Posted May 24, 2021 |
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