You've all completely missed my point!
I'm talking abt what u did years back as a kid.
Kits! U gotta be joking. As a kid I had to money garden to even buy some simple r's and c's. Don't like kits - they always smack of 'being too easy'. If I had even dared get a Heathkit catalogue my Dad wld have gone MAD. In the UK we had a good wireless construction mag and more than enough info to get energised. Kits - make me laugh. At fourteen I had built my own tilt over tower and could use my Dads engineering lathe, screwcut with setting up changewheels etc. - but not all at the same moment in time! The only communications rx was an old ex-army tank set given to me by a visiting callsign, he must have been baffled by my Dads stinginess. Yet here was a kid keen to learn!!
The question I am asking is abt years ago getting involved with veroboard, making inductors, sn74oo's, metalwork, making your own slo mo tuning mechanisms, etc. Kept me busy till I went into digs at seventeen.