RadioBanter - View Single Post

February 4th 04, 10:55 PM

In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

(N2EY) wrote in message
.com...
ospam (Larry Roll K3LT) wrote in message
...

achievement only points accusingly to the fact that
present amateur radio licensing requirements are "dumbed-down" to
such an unreasonably low level that even a 7-year old can attain an
Amateur Extra-class license.

That's one way to look at it. The way I prefer to look at it is that a
bright and motivated young child set herself a goal and achieved it.

I don't see much of a connect between your particular preferences and
the highly-probable reality in these cases.

I just gave the opposite spin to Larry's.

Parents and other
relatives impose expectations on kids all the time.

That's part of the job.

I sure did. I
"motivated" mine any number of times into "achieving" and in some of
those cases they met my expectations just to get me off their backs.

That's a bit different from Larry's claim that the only reason was because the
mother pushed her.

And while the novelty of a 7-year old
Extra is certainly "news" in the Amateur Radio community, it does
not point to a secure future for our hobby/service.

Why not? I don't see anything wrong with young people, or females,
getting
licenses. In fact, I think that sort of thing is just what ham radio
needs *more* of!

That's not what Larry meant.

Sure sounded like it to me.

Over the 100 year history of ham radio
maybe we've had what, pick a number, twenty kids under ten licensed?

I dunno. Maybe a couple hundred.

Look up a book called "Radio Rescue" by Lynne Barasch. Ten year old ham in
1923. True story.

Versus around 1.5 million total U.S. hams?

Where'd you get a number that big? Prolly more like a million.

Those kids have all been
statistical anomalies pure and simple and have not had, nor will they
have any influence at all on the course of the service in the future.

Not my point at all.

Point is that two of things working against ham radio today are lack
of youngsters and the tendency of some people to avoid hobbies the whole
family can't enjoy. Family of hams beats both those trends.

Any of Mattie's young peers, without the support of a licensed parent,
and the material support of a functional station in their home, would
not likely achieve the same results.

Absolutely. How many of these kids *didn't* have a ham in the
immediate family?

Few if any. So what? The music teacher's kid is probably going to have more
access to instruments than the plumber's.

So what? Part of what healthy families *DO* is support each other's
needs
and interests. In that family, it's clear that ham radio is a family
thing,
not something one family member does in seclusion from the rest.
That's a
good thing. It brings families together, crosses generational
barriers, helps
build a level of education, maturity and understanding that are
greatly needed.

I think you're over-preaching to the choir again here James.

I don't.

And there is no better way to help a child learn than to get them
interested in the subject. Geography? Time zones? Math, science,
technology? An interest in ham radio helps with all of those.

Her folks shepherded her into ham radio beacause ham radio is a great
way for kids to learn geography??

Heck no - that's just a side benefit.

(About the best we can hope for
is that other ham parents will take similar steps to induce their
children to become licensed, but that's about as far as it can go
until they become adults, with their own financial resources and the
adult prerogatives that go with it.

I never got any help in the ham radio area from my folks. So I was
delayed a few years in getting started.

Nothing unusual about that.

'zactly. Which is why it took me a little longer. If I'd had real support, I'd
a been
really dangerous. bwaahaahaaa

A huge percentage of all of us kid hams
didn't have any particular "parental support" when we became hams. All
my folks cared about was that whatever it was that I was doing with a
soldering iron in the cellar didn't result in the Henny Carr the town
cop dragging me home by the scruff of my neck *again* for commiting
some bush-league juvenile atrocity or another. Worked for them and it
worked for me.

'zactly. One of the biggest parental jobs is to get 'em interested in
something - anything - that's relatively harmless compared to what's out
there. Which they may get involved in anyway, but it beats taking the
hands off approach.

With some kids, a lot of support is needed. With others, the best way to kill
the kid's interest is to get involved too much.

About the best face I can put on this is that young Mattie now has
the rest of her life to "grow" into the hobby. Hopefully, over the
years, she will acquire technical knowledge and operating skills which
will become equivalent to her Amateur Extra status.

She got 4 wrong on Element 4. How many did you get wrong on yours?

No-counter: We all know that there is *no* relationship between
passing the tests and the level of useful knowledge reqired to put
together an HF ham station.

Of course. Point is she didn't just pass. Then again, she got 4 more
wrong than our buddy in Allentown....

This NG has glaring examples of same.

Oh yes - including one or two who couldn't even get any ham license, despite
years-old predictions...

As of now,
however, she is more of a stunt than the real thing.

How do you know?

He doesn't and neither do you.

And that's the point. Larry made all kinds of statements about someone he
doesn't know at all.

Fact is that it's not hard to find
instances of their folks pressuring kids into outstanding
accomplishments in order to have bragging rights about the kid. Which
I suspect is where Larry is coming from. Whether it's true in Mattie's
case is 100% conjecture.

Bingo.

I have no
doubt that when asked to engage in even a fairly low-level discussion
of technical and operating subjects, she will not be able to give
any reasonable accounting of herself, beyond perhaps the simple
recitation of answers to the exam questions.

You might be surprised.

She's probably somewhere between the opposite poles you two guys live
in.

And that's the point.

Tell ya what, Larry, I'll fill a box with parts and you can come over
and build afunctioning ham rig out of them. No instructions, no
elmers, just parts and a book or two.
I did it when I was 13. I doubt
you could do it, Larry.

Virtually all yer kid ham predecessors could cobble rigs together
"Back in my day".

I could, too. Many of my counterparts could. A few couldn't.

It was almost the norm then. A lot higher
percentage of us designed and rolled our own than was the case "in
your day" a decade and a half later. By the time Larry got into ham
radio hombrewing no longer made any sense except in oddball cases so I
doubt he had any reason to even consider building his own rig.

Coax can be had with the connectors already on, too. And premade G5RVs
often make more sense than rolling one's own...

Entry
level rigs have been products of the era in which we came into the
service. YMMV and it obviously has.

The irony is that the box of parts I'd give Larry would include many parts
that were only recently given to me by an anonymous benefactor....

Again, none of Mattie's inadequacies are her fault, she is just
the product of her parent's dreams.

Nonsense, Larry. She's an individual. Kids are not robots.

C'mon, you know better than that.

Yes I do. Kids are harder to train than robots.

Seven year olds are about as
compliant as they come.

HAW!!

They're "individuals" only to the extent that
their parents and teachers allow them to act independently.

I know some you oughta meet...

There are folks who walk into a test session with no ham license and
walk out with an Extra. That was going on before the VE system, too.
The barely-10-year-old I mentioned above had to do 13 wpm sending and
receiving plus the old Class B/General written.

I know Janie. Her father was Jesse Bieberman W3KT who is still a
legend. Honer Roll top-ender for decades, phone and cw dx contester,
25wpm with a straight key for 48 straight. Vice Director of the
Atlantic Division for decades and one of the most powerful voices in
Newington in those days. Ran the W3 buro single-handed also for
decades. Was also a private-school high school math instructor.

I knew him too. See above about the music teacher's kid. Only in this case
it's more like Ormandy's kid.

You
think maybe Jane just got up one morning when she was ten and outta
nowhere declared that she was gonna pursue a ham ticket??

Naw, she was copying code when she was six. And still active with the same
call.

At least nobody has yet accused the VEs of "fraud" (with absolutely no
evidence)
as has happened here before.

73 de Jim, N2EY