RadioBanter - View Single Post - If Ham Radio Were Invented Today (reprise)

January 21st 04, 09:43 PM

In article , Leo
writes:

Subject: If Ham Radio Were Invented Today (reprise)
From: Leo
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 01:40:38 GMT

On 20 Jan 2004 23:24:27 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:

In article , Leo

writes:

Some good thoughts there, Leo. I'll add to my previous comments.

This follows on the lines of the thread that Mike and I have commented
on previously, so here goes:

On 18 Jan 2004 20:34:05 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:

Alternative Universe Probable Truisms -

1. There would be NO ARRL to provide "guidance" and direction.
That expired before St. Hiram expired. [in this alternative
universe] Newington, CT, would have no museum.

True - no AR, no ARRL. Mr. Maxim would be remembered only as the
inventor of the Maxim Silencer for explosive weapons, and for his work
on automobile silencers (mufflers, I assume).

However, following along with the subject of the thread - the startup
of a "new" Amateur Radio Service" would concievably attract a lot of
people to it - an organization starting up to represent them and their
interests (and take their money) seems like a given.

In the wider world of early radio organizations (see Thomas H.
White's very notable web pages as well as print history), ARRL
was a relative latecomer in amateur radio. The one thing they
can claim is having survived the early competition in the USA.

[I'll have to use the USA as a reference here, no slight intended
against Canada, only against my meager knowledge of Canadian
amateur activities of earlier times]

None taken - I haven't found much historical information on amateur
radio up here, so my own knowledge in this area is in the meager
department as well....

ARRL, by their own history, began as a local New England radio
club largely organized for relaying telegraphy messages
quicker than was provided by commercial carriers. In reality that
is a form of "hacking" hardly different than the CD music stealing
that went on through the Internet in modern times. So, the 3-man
club got more locals and "organized" in 1914. The Radio Club of
America had already existed for 5 years and some of the RCA
members were very involved in amateur radio activities. [first to
use acronym 'RCA' but not aligned with RCA Corporation that once
was] The local ARRL club was small in 1914 and many national
clubs for amateur radio were much larger in membership.

The "League" effectively used PR and promotional techniques to
expand, slowly adding on news and technical publications. It had
very little of what it eventually became. Intense self-promotion
(League publications themselves are excellent vehicles to do such
things) kept their name/organization in everyone's mind. It fostered
an image in many minds to make up for the generally solitary
activity of one amateur listening for hours to static in hopes of
capturing a weak telegraphic signal. Technology of radio was still
quite primitive. The first two attempts at trans-national (USA)
message relay were disappointing failures. Nonetheless, the ARRL
kept up the PR and eventually made it through the competition for
"national amateur representation." Competition included the
formidable base of Hugo Gernsback's little publishing empire and
his own attempts at building an amateur radio organization.

The key element in establishing the ARRL was Maxim's own
funded lobbying in DC after WW1 to restore U.S. amateur radio.
That worked, amazingly enough, and became the stuff of legend
in much later League self-promotion...even 86 years later.
Maxim became "president for life" of the ARRL and "served"
until the 1930s. Sort of a private little empire which happens in
all organizations eventually. That's not to decry Maxim's
efforts but, in order to be fair, one cannot pin 'altruism' on Maxim's
"service to the League." He was instrumental in starting it and no
doubt was self-possessive about it.

With radio technology still not climbing the steep walls of
exponential leaps and bounds in electronics technology in 1920,
ARRL publications were about the only trade news available to
the everyman hobbyist at that time. There was very little of the
information media bonanza we all enjoy today. Knowledge took
time to spread. League publications helped that since they weren't
involved in patent disputes (many, many in the 1920s, 1930s) or
various groups' attempts to control radio or trade secret
developments that industry was jealously guarding. ARRL pubs
were an EXCELLENT vehicle, a medium for self-promotion and the
League didn't hesitate one bit to keep on promoting itself.

2. There would be NO morse code test since no other radio
service except Maritime Radio used morse code. There
would be NO need to keep a "pool of trained morse radio
operators" for any national need.

True enough - if amateur radio were invented today, it's pretty
unlikely that Morse Code would be a mandatory requirement or play any
significant role - it's a dead technology in the commercial and
military world today (just spies and some covert military ops remain
professional users of morse signalling today). I believe that it
would be a 'special interest' thing for people who wanted to play
around with it.

There are MANY and varied groups of hobbyists involved in
electronics today and many of those existed before personal
computers began. "High fidelity" music/sound was one though it has
shrunk to a niche market now. Robotics in general seems to be
the latest in interest, merging microcontrollers and machinery in lots
of different forms. Keyboard synthesizers had been a big thing with
the first of the lower-cost personal computers, but now simplified into
commercially-available programmable music machines. A close
look into the availability of parts and materials at various smaller
merchandizers on websites will show that there is great interest in
electronics-oriented experimentation and hobby work besides just
radio communications. Merchants are a good barometer of where
the hobby work goes on...it's a cruel market where only the larger
interests survive (regardless of individual favorites)...merchants can't
pay bills with altruism. :-)

I wonder, though, if in the absence of Amateur Radio, something else
might have evolved to meet the need of having extra trained people
available? Perhaps an auxillary (and voluntary) communications corps,
mobilized by the military or local government during times of need?
They might even provide the equipment and training...wouldn't be free,
though - Amateur Radio doesn't cost them much (if anything) to
mobilize.

I personally doubt it on scales larger than local, urban groups.
Radio - on the larger scale of human activities - is an established
medium of communications used by government and business on
a large scale. It's not a mystery or magic that it once appeared to
be in the 1920s or 1930s. Radio is far more widespread in society
of the USA than all of amateur radio in North America.

Use of a radio is ridiculously easy with existing radio equipment of
the 1960s era, not just that of the 2000s. Government and business
HTs on VHF-UHF are more numerous than amateur HTs in the USA
and have been so for more than 30 years. What is needed, if anything,
is the coordination of groups involved in "needy operations," the
control-and-response protocols, organizational structures to get the
various tasks done. That doesn't need specialized "radio training,"
just group organization. Police and fire people use radios every day
without any special classes in radio innards, often with just a few
minutes of personalized instruction.

3. There would be NO tales of olde-tyme ham doings because
there would be no old-timers left to tell the tales...only
pretenders who longed for a simpler (mythical) life way back
before they were born.

Well, there would still be old timers telling tales - just not ham
radio ones

Of course! That's a given. :-)

Especially those bitter about not having the opportunity to do big-
leagues communications on HF a half century ago. bseg, lol

...caught that

4. The Titanic would have sunk anyway and several movies made
about that tragedy.

Unfortunately, yes. And many other unfortunate events may well have
become much disasters or have increased in magnitude, as there would
have been far less people monitoring the bands and detecting /
relaying emergency traffic if the ARS had not existed.

Would there be? That MIGHT be true in 1912, 92 years ago and 2
years before the ARRL existed. The international martime distress
frequency of 500 KHz had not yet been implemented in 1912. The
distance to land was not that great and the radios of that time were
not sensitive in receiving although some of the spark transmitters
where "high power." Had that happened in the much larger Pacific,
farther from land, or in the southern Atlantic or Indian Ocean, it
might have been a whole different story.

Pro-coders are quick on the trigger to trot out OLD tales of "need
to relay traffic" when there is NO need to relay any traffic today or
even four decades ago. GMDSS was implemented by the Maritime
Community to replace the old 500 KHz Autoalarms. That there
haven't been that many maritime disasters since is a tribute to
modern day shipbuilding and education/experience of ship masters.
The highly-touted 500 KHz frequency didn't save the Andrea Doria
from sinking back in 1956...or prevent the collosion with the
Stockholm. The international civil aviation community has had
121.5 MHz as an emergency frequency since 1955, several SSB
voice frequencies on HF since then for over-ocean flights.

Here in Los Angeles we just had the 10th anniversary of the Northridge
Earthquake. Widespread destruction and 60 deaths as a result. The
entire primary electrical power distribution was cut off for hours. The
area IS organized, trained, drilled for this sort of thing and it
functioned
very well using the infrastructure of government-utilities-business
communications, both wireline and radio. Amateur radio did not aid
in that until about two days later. Utility crews had their hands full
trying to restore power (successful), repair damaged lines and streets,
clearing away some toppled buildings. Fire departments rolled as
needed, their stations and vehicle communications functioning fine.
Hospitals and care centers all had emergency electrical power, more
needed than "health and welfare message traffic." We survived.

"Independence Day" would have been
made anyway as a comic science-fiction vehicle for Will Smith
who would later wear black suits and shades.

Uh-huh...even the ARS was unable to save the world from this.

From Hollywood? :-) Try the movie "Frequency."

5. Hallicrafters and National Radio and Heathkit would have gone
belly-up anyway. Collins Radio would have continued on into
the military and commercial radio market without making any
overpriced fancy amateur radios. Yaesu, Kenwood, Icom
would still have been successful in the commercial and
government market. SGC might still exist but in the personal
sailing market. Ten-Tec might not exist.

Without the ARS, one indeed wonders how long companies like
Hallicrafters and National would have survived - after WWII, amateur
radio was a large part of their market.

Not as much as you would believe. Bill Halligan's Chicago company
was busy with both prime and subcontracts for radio equipment,
including the famous BC-610 used in the SCR-299 mobile HF
station. Hallicrafters was busy with making HF radios for the
commercial and government market, not seen in popular ham
magazine ads. National Radio made a name for itself with the HRO
receivers sold also to commercial and government buyers, again not
that much advertisement in magazines. Very unlikely makers of
things got into the radio manufacture arena during WW2, such as
Lewyt Vacuum Cleaner Company who made some of the BC-339
1 KW HF transmitters I QSYed a half century ago! [name was on
the ID tag riveted to the frame...:-) ]

I have always been amazed at the versatility of some of the companies
engaged in WWII production - it would be no small feat for a company
manufacturing vacuum cleaners to retool their lines and train / hire
staff to build a 1 KW radio transmitter to mil spec.

...or the Rock-Ola Jukebox Company cranking out M1 Carbines.

Incredible!

Paul Galvin's Motorola-to-be (also in Chicago) was cranking out
the BC-1000 walkie-talkies (backpack VHF transceiver) of WW2
after stealing Dan Noble from Link, Link doing pioneering in mobile
FM radio for police departments...which led to widespread use of
mobile, channelized FM transceiver for land vehicles. Galvin was
also organizer/central-point for the number 2 priority of all U.S.
WW2 manufacturing (second only to the Manhattan Project) of
quartz crystal units. Better than a half million crystal units a
month made by over 30 U.S. companies for the last three years
of WW2...all for the military communications needs of the USA
and Great Britain.

Could they have hung on by
just selling radio equipment to SWLs listening to foreign commercial
broadcasts?

No. No need. After WW2, there was a big (but not widely advertised)
push in other areas. Motorola went after the police and government
mobile FM radios along with other makers. Collins Radio, already big
enough in military-commercial radio, got a boost from SAC contracts
for single-channel SSB and various military land radios. RCA also got
into the single-channel SSB race, designed some, eventually dropped
out of much of the military market. Civil aviation got going on VHF AM
comm-nav and UHF radionav radios for aircraft after 1955 and the ICAO
decisions-allocations. Military TACAN had morphed into DME for civil
aviation, civil folks having develped VOR for bearing to ground stations.
National Radio Company continued for years to build radio systems
for the USN, past 1970. Collins continues to be a standard for
excellence in aircraft systems.

Many of the makers of today's radios for commercial-government use
aren't advertised in "popular" magazines because that's not a target
market area. ITT in Fort Wayne, Indiana, designed (and redesigned)
the SINCGARS basic small-unit land forces radio...between them and
the former Land Division of General Dynamics in Florida, a quarter
million sets were produced beginning in 1989. That's more than about
a hundred thousand AN/PRC-25s and -77s made since the early 60s
(VHF, channelized, voice only, used in Vietnam and elsewhere). One
of the Hughes Aircraft divisions designed and made a bunch of the
standard HF R/Ts for land forces (AN/PRC-104 for manpack version,
20 W PEP, automatic antenna tuner) beginning in 1984. There's a
whole heaping glob of various military electronics produced by many
since the end of WW2, too many to recount here.

Very little of that is evidenced by ads in ham magazines. Hams
don't buy the stuff new and surplus radios don't generate money for
the original manufacturers. It WILL be familiar to those of us who
have worked in the electronics industry.

Nearly all the "radio" makers of 1945 tried their hand at TV sets for
civilians. Hallicrafters did (with a push-button channel selector!), so
did National Radio (I bought a 7-incher in 1949). Most dropped out
in the intense competition. Eventually all the U.S. makers of TV
sets went belly-up although the Indianapolis division of Thompson-
CSF (the old RCA Corporation plant there) still makes some color
TVs on-shore. General Radio, who long ago quit making radios in
favor of precision instruments, eventually dropped out. I don't know
why Hallicrafters quit or what happened to National Radio other than
concentrating solely on government stuff. Collins Radio is alive and
well but long out of amateur markets.

Icom, Yaesu, and Kenwood probably make more commercial-
government radios than amateur equipment. Those are the triad
from the Far East that beat the commercial pants off North American
communications radio producers...except for some specialty
divisions of General Electric and Motorola (two as an example in
mobile radio market). Some of their commercial, non-amateur
market radios are being sold through chains like HRO, but otherwise
few amateurs get input from ham publications on that side of their
business. All three do good in design and manufacture, are
innovative and dare to hit the market with new things.

Some companies may never have started up in the first place, as their
beginnings were entirely in amateur radio.

Before or after WW2? Bill Halligan was a ham, also Art Collins, just
two early examples. Collins Radio survived and prospered, Halli-
crafters didn't. The reasons aren't simplistic. Business, to survive
and grow, needs a lot of things and niche markets aren't successful
for the ambitious growth plans of some. Diversification may be
necessary as was the growth of General Electric Company and its
many divisions...RCA Corp was spun out of some of those and
eventually GE bought RCA back (irony!). :-)

Whether or not specialty or niche-market companies survive depends
on the founders and what they want to do. They may develop a
fantastic reputation through clever PR and create an intense, loyal
following, but the eventual color of bookkeeping ink can catch up to
them. Adulation of customers doesn't pay bills...customers have to
keep buying, write checks, not write peans of praise. Business is
TOUGH.

[ to be continued... ]

LHA / WMD