Building the SW-717:
Heathkit advertised this radio as being a
“Three Evening Kit”, the time in which the
average builder could successfully assemble
it. Much of the circuitry is located on a single
circuit board. As always, prior to assembly
the manual recommends you familiarize
yourself with the parts. Taking inventory is
the easy way to do this. This kit comes with
the parts separated into two “packages”.
Pack #1, which is the majority of the small
components that mount on the circuit board
and pack two, which is called the final pack
and includes the larger items such as the
metal chassis parts as well as the circuit
board, hookup wire, nut starter tool, solder
and documentation.
Since sometime in very late 1961 Heathkit
started including solder with their kits, often
in liberal quantities. The reason likely was
because they were getting a lot of returned
kits that used non-electronic types of solder.
Heath supplied solder in 3’ rolls, each sealed
in a plastic bag (See Figure 4) Usually at
least one package of solder remained un-
opened, often several, when the kit was com-
pleted. First Alpha and later Kester provided
the solder. In larger kits you would find a
handful of these bags.
With parts pack #1 and the manual, solder
and the circuit board from the final pack, the
circuit board is stuffed. Seven pages of the
Heathkit manual detail stuffing the board
which includes the input and oscillator coils
and the oscillator trimmer capacitors.
Once the board is complete, Heathkit sug-
gests you inventory the remaining parts.
Again, this is more for your familiarization of
parts than that they expect you to find parts
missing.
Assembly then begins on the chassis which
involves mounting the major parts such as
solder terminal strips, the power transformer
and power supply components, main and
bandspread tuning capacitors, switches and
pots, pilot light sockets, etc. At this time the
pulleys, shafts and mechanical parts associ-
ated with the tuning capacitors are also in-
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