“H” is for Heathkits and Hams: Part 4 – The 1980s, 1990s, and the end

The 1980s presented many significant challenges to the Heath Company’s kit business. Commercial electronic equipment had become abundant, and automated assembly, especially with the advent of surface-mount technology, drove down the labor costs in many consumer products including stereo receivers, televisions, and Ham gear. Microcomputers and PCs became the main focus of attention. While Heath continued to develop new, more advanced products for the amateur radio market, Heath’s radio kits faced significant economic challenges from Asian amateur radio equipment manufacturers.

Meanwhile, Heath had a new owner. Zenith bought the company from Schlumberger in 1979 to diversify into the personal computer market. Initially, the merged company did well. Ultimately, it didn’t, and Heath exited the kit business in 1992.

This series is based on a presentation by Chas Gilmore, a life-long Ham who joined the Heath Company in 1966 as a design engineer and worked at the Heath Company for more than two decades, eventually becoming EVP and General Manager.

Chas Gilmore: There were big changes in the Heath Company’s history in the very late 1970s. Popular Electronics introduced the Altair 8800 personal computer in 1975. Heath became a developer of personal computers, starting out with the H-8 computer based on the Intel 8080A microprocessor. The H-11 was a 16-bit computer kit based on the Digital Equipment Corporation’s PDP-11 minicomputer chipset. The H-9 was the serial terminal. The H-10 was a paper tape reader/punch, because you had to have some way to get the information into the computer. Alternatively, one could write tone-encoded information onto cassette tapes and read it back.

In 1977, the first year of H-8 production, Heath’s computer sales were one third as large as all its amateur radio sales. The H-8 was a hugely popular product the minute it was introduced. A Heath Users Group formed and held major meetings once a year in various and sundry convention centers across the United States, typically with upwards of 10,000 attendees. We had our own monthly publication: Remark magazine.

In 1979, Zenith purchased Heath. Zenith’s TV business was ailing, and the company really wanted to get into the booming personal computer business by acquiring a going personal computer manufacturer. Heath was available. Supposedly, Schlumberger sold Heath for $64.5 million, and total annual sales were probably right in that same area, maybe a little bigger, at that time. The Heath computer business was over $30 million, with two thirds in kits and one third assembled product. That was only two years after the H-8’s introduction. After the sale, Heath’s computer business became Zenith Data Systems (ZDS).

Steve Leibson: Who was doing the assembly? Did you have that done in house?

Chas Gilmore: That was done in house.

The ZDS product line grew very rapidly. By 1983, which is when I rejoined Heath, ZDS sales were already at $225 million. There was a separate corporation running Heath stores, which were scattered across the country. Most of those Heath stores, which had been selling Heathkits, were now devoted to computer sales almost exclusively.

In the amateur radio area in the 1980s, Heath introduced the SS-9000. It was an HF, 160-meter through 10-meter transceiver. It included all the WARC (World Administrative Radio Conference) bands: around 10, 18, and 24 MHz as well as the existing HF bands. It was very, very feature rich. There were no options. You got the whole thing. Originally, it was designed to be the SS-8000, which was a kit. The SS-9000 was going to be the assembled version. It turned out that the kit was not feasible. People just could not get it assembled and aligned.

Heath’s SS-9000 HF transceiver was too complex to sell as a kit. Image credit: Chas Gilmore, Chuck Penson, and Terry Perdue

There was a power supply that went with it. A power supply with a speaker and a clock. The SS-9000 products were introduced in 1982 and lasted only a couple of years. We discontinued the product in 1984. Unfortunately, the assembled version, the SS-9000, priced at $2800.00, was non-competitive. The market was rapidly filling with transceivers produced in the Far East at very competitive prices.

In 1983, Heath introduced the $700 HW-5400, which also had WARC bands but covered only 80 through 10 meters. That rig also turned out to be a pretty complex kit to build. It evolved into a kit with many pre-assembled, pre-tested boards, so it became more a mechanical assembly. The power supply, clock, and speaker came along with it as accessories. The HW-5400 was introduced in 1983 and discontinued somewhere in late 1984 or early 1985. Product life cycles were vastly shorter in the 1980s, compared to the 1950s and 1960s.

Heath sold its HW-5400 transceiver kit for $700. The kit consisted of pre-assembled boards and was largely a mechanical assembly kit, signaling a trend in kit building. Heath’s SS-9000 HF transceiver was too complex to sell as a kit. Image credit: Chas Gilmore, Chuck Penson, and Terry Perdue

In the 1980s and early 1990s, we focused on unique amateur radio accessories. There were the terminal network controllers for packet radio: the HD-4040 and the HK-232. There was an antenna rotor controller, the Intellirotor, which was designed by Terry Perdue. It was a very interesting product. You could type in the direction that you wanted your antenna to turn – key it in, I should say, on its keyboard – hit auto, and the Intellirotor directed an antenna rotator to swing the antenna around to that direction. You could store countries, and it would automatically point the antenna in the correct direction. So, for example, if you knew somebody was calling from Sweden, you just typed in the initials of the country, and it brought your antenna around for either short path or long path to aim at Sweden. The Intellirotor was based on an Intel 8052 microcontroller. I use one today.

Heath’s HD-1780 Intellirotor memorized antenna pointing directions for specific locations. Image credit: Terry Perdue

Heath introduced a very popular product in the late 1970s: the GC-1000, dubbed “The Most Accurate Clock.” It had a scanning receiver that monitored and synchronized to 5-, 10-, and 15-MHz WWV standard time transmissions. The clock translates the WWV sub-audible time code to set the clock time to within a few milliseconds. As you can see from the image below, GC-1000 not only displays hours, minutes, and seconds, it also displays tenths of seconds. Additionally, it has indicators to show when it is in very high stability mode, which indicates that the time has been recently checked and compared to the WWV time. This clock was extremely popular with amateur radio operators. I still have one sitting right above my radios.

Heath’s GC-1000 Most Accurate Clock synchronized to WWV and displayed time in tenths of a second. Image credit: Chas Gilmore, Chuck Penson, and Terry Perdue

Heath also sold more than 50 small accessories for less than $100, including code practice oscillators, VLF to HF converters, an antenna switch, a noise bridge, and many other amateur radio products.

In Heath’s later history, during the late 1980s, the French-owned computer company Groupe Bull bought ZDS and got Heath as well, mainly because we were co-resident in the same facilities. That transaction took place in December of 1989 for approximately $500 million. ZDS sales were very close to $1.5 billion at the time, however, they were losing money. Zenith’s television sales volumes were about the same and also losing money. Heath was a very small part of the transaction. I remember that at that time, our total sales were probably around $75 million.

In the early 1990s, Heath exited the kit business. We announced that decision in March 1992. The kits were just no longer profitable within a large corporate structure, and the interest in building kits had decayed rather substantially. We had a fairly strong business going with Heath Educational Systems, in both individual learning programs and high school and two-year tech school programs. The educational business was taken private in the 1990s. It went bankrupt in 2012.

Note: The final article in this series discusses the factors that made the Heath company a success in the amateur radio market from the late 1940s through the early 1990s.

Chas Gilmore (W8IAI) has given his full presentation about Heath’s kits and the company’s other contributions to amateur radio to several Ham groups and clubs. If your organization is within a reasonable travel distance from Akron, Ohio and you’re interested in a live presentation, you can contact him at cgilmore@groupgilmore.com.

Chuck Penson (WA7ZZE) self-published a massive, well-illustrated, encyclopedic book titled “Heathkit, A Guide to the Amateur Radio Products” in 2021. Many of the photos in this article series and some details came from Penson’s book. The book is now out of print after three editions. However, Penson is considering another printing. If you are interested in a copy of this book, you can contact Penson at wa7zze@gmail.com.

Terry Perdue (K8TP) was a design engineer at the Heath Company from 1973 to 1991. Among other products, he designed the Heath Intellirotor, a computerized controller used for pointing Ham antennas. In 1992, Perdue self-published a book titled “Heath Nostalgia,” which is now out of print. He also published a CD of photos titled “Heathkit – The Early Years,” which was also out of print. However, Perdue is offering the $15 CD to EEJournal readers. The CD includes JPG page scans of Perdue’s book, “Heath Nostalgia,” and about 900 high-resolution photos of the Heathkit plant, catalogs, fliers, in-house publications, newspaper clippings, selected product photos (mostly vintage Ham products), and a 30-minute audio file of Heath’s first Director of Engineering Gene Fiebich’s memories, which include how he came to join Heath and events he attended, including trade shows, Heath’s Christmas parties and picnics, etc. Contact Perdue at k8tp@comcast.net for more information.

References

Chas Gilmore, “Heathkit and Ham Radio, 2024 Edition,” PowerPoint presentation

Chuck Penson, “Heathkit: A Guide to the Amateur Radio Products,” self published, 2021

Terry Perdue, “Heath Nostalgia,” self published, 1992

Read all five articles in the “H is for Heathkits and Hams” series:

“H” is for Heathkits and Hams: Part 1 – Early Days through the 1950s

“H” is for Heathkits and Hams: Part 2 – The 1960s

“H” is for Heathkits and Hams: Part 3 – The 1970s

“H” is for Heathkits and Hams: Part 4 – The 1980s, 1990s, and the end

“H” is for Heathkits and Hams: Part 5 – Reasons for Heath’s Success in Amateur Radio

EEJournal’s original Heathkit history series:

The Rise and Fall of Heathkit – Part 1: Early Days