The HW-101 80...10 meter Ham Band Transceiver came on the market in 1970 and was produced until 1983. It was the successor of the HW-100 that came on the market in 1968. The two transceiver models are very similar but the HW-101 is somewhat improved over the HW-100. On the HW-101 the Heath Company replaced the dialing mechanism that had caused so many complaints on the HW-100 and they also prepared it for a CW-filter to be mounted already from start. The HW-101 is the most successful Heathkit transceiver ever, in production numbers. More than 40 000 units were produced. The HW-101 was meant to be replaced by the HW-104 in 1975 but the HW-101 survived the HW-104 that was produced only until 1975. The HW-104 was a somewhat simplified SB-104. The SB-104 came on the market in 1974 but was replaced in 1977 by the improved SB-104A. They were all replaced in 1983 by the HW-5400 but it was produced only until 1984.

This is my first HW-101 but I have one more. When I bought this HW-101 it was very smoky and worked only just. The receive sensitivity was poor. I cleaned it from nicotine and tar and did the following modifications:

I changed the V10 and V11 tubes from 6HS6 to 6AU6 types to reduce cross modulation. I changed the value of R113 from 1kΩ to 10kΩ. I added a 10MΩ resistor between lug 3 (hot end) of zero adjusting potentiometer and pin 2 of T102 to improve S-meter action. I added a 10kΩ resistor across the primary winding of T103 to further improve the S-meter action and to make strong audio signals cleaner. I replaced the resistor R202 with a jumper wire to increase output gain. I replaced the resistors R107 to a 100kΩ 1W and R106 to a 33kΩ 1W to stop S-meter drift. Finally I did a total re-alignment of the HW-101. Now it is like a whole different receiver.