It's a different experience than shopping in person, but with Digi-Key, Mouser, Parts Express, etc - I'm not bemoaning the loss of RS as a place for components.
It's a different experience than shopping in person, but with Digi-Key, Mouser, Parts Express, etc - I'm not bemoaning the loss of RS as a place for components.
Jim
The machine does not isolate us from the great problems of nature but plunges us more deeply into them. - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
dooh! duplicate post!
[This Space for Rent]
Last edited by XE1/N5AL; 06-30-2012 at 09:42 PM.
RS was convenient for parts, but those parts were sometimes overpriced and of inferior quality. I remember back in the late 70's when RS sold ICs under the nebulous claim of "100% electrically functional". They charged three times the price of places like DigiKey, whose parts met the full manufacturer's specifications (function, speed, delays, power dissipation, operational temperature range, etc.). I still loved the place, though.
I bought my first receiver at a Lafayette store. Don't remember the town, but it was down from us on State Route 10 in NNJ.
Starfire VI. My dad insisted that this would be 'good enough' for me to use... and it was, for a beginning SWL. No BFO, no selectivity, so it was worthless on the ham bands.
I wanted something a little better, but he wouldn't let me spend the money (well, I was 12 at the time). Figured it would be a waste, that I wouldn't stay with the hobby, or that I wouldn't keep the receiver.
I still have it. And it still works.
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BAN THE DH!
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Cutch 300!!!!!
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In the Denver area, Radio Shack was around in the very early 70's, and they weren't all bad. Sold tubes, had tube checkers and if you needed a resistor, they were just a little expensive (but available). I had a Jr. High music teacher who moonlighted at RS; had to be '70 or '71.
Also had a couple of Burstein Applebee stores -- one was at the Buckingham Square Mall in Aurora (that mall was just torn down recently after many years of financial neglect). That was a stereo store for the most part. No parts and not ham related at all. They had another store downtown (Denver) for awhile that sold blister pack component parts as I recall (memory hazy). I don't think they were ever into ham stuff much.
The big (and only?) ham place in Denver for many years was CW Electronics. "John Capone" used to run machine gun ads in the ham press. Saw my first Apple II computer at CW when they were still at their LoDo location in 1978. Alan Applegate (KØBG) was a long-time employee. CW moved to a location on the south end of downtown and was never quite the same as they tried to get more into the computer craze. I actually work with a guy from the "Capone" family who is probably very familiar with the story. (Mental note: sit with HIM at the next picnic.) CW Electronics is long gone.
Sometime during my long hiatus from it all, HRO took over and we now have that.
Olson? Remember it, but they never had stores here. As I recall, they did catalog mail order and were never a huge player. Pre-1970, most of what I remember involves Allied and Lafayette catalogs. Heathkit, too. KnightKit was part of Allied and Allied is still around as a huge component distributor (like Newark and Mouser).
It strikes me just now that nobody back then was buying new Hallicrafters or National, or.... They must have been out of biz by then. My first real intro to ham radio (CQWWDX, 1971) was all Drake and Heathkit (and those 6' tall 4-1000 homebrew amps). Some guys had S-Lines, but that was pretty rare because they were so expensive. Even Drake stuff was pretty rich -- Heathkits were much more popular. A kilobuck was a lot of moolah back then, but it'd buy you an R4-B/T4-XB in factory sealed boxes.
I probably see the inside of a RS store about once a year these days, and half the time it's because of a work emergency. 99.9% of the time I'm in no hurry and can order online.
The 1939 RS catalog looks like an AM'ers paradise. Tubes, UTC mod xfmrs, HV Mica condensers, variable transmitting caps, etc. I guess back in 1939 RS lived up to its name.
I keep my 2 feet on the ground, and my head in the twilight zone.
I like your call which brings me to my "Remember When" WLS actually played rock music on 890KHzOriginally Posted by W9WLS
"One man with courage makes a majority." ~ Andrew Jackson
Steve KA9MOT
Macomb, IL
Yep - had one in Akron, and I frequented it back in the mid 80's - shortly before it closed.
We still have Philcap (NTE dealer) but their prices are stratospheric.
"Everyone wants to be an AM Gangsta until it's time to start doing AM Gangsta shit."
My oldest brother used to work there in the late 50's/early 60's.
When the government's boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence. — GARY LLOYD
The nation we live in is the nation we have built by design, each successive generation raising the wall of tyranny a little higher. - Chris Griffin
No joke. I somehow expected a lot of the prices to be lower, though.
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