Gregg wrote:
Behold, John Miles scribed on tube chassis:

Somehow, I doubt many of those 20 WPM Extras making equine posteriors
out of themselves on 75 fone are doing so on homebrew rigs.

The idea is the advanced ticket people can buy commercial rigs.

I was reading some of the the history of Ham radio though and it seems
today's ham's rarely fit the bill :-(

What happened?

Way Back When I Got Started, in 1962, the difference between what I
could build at home and what I could buy from a manufacturer wasn't
all that great. The high-end stuff got fairly fancy, as indicated by
the Collins A-line gear, but mostly it was fairly mundane.

But that was when commercial transistor gear was moderately new and
much (or most) commercial stuff was tube-based. There were _no_ ICs,
definitely no computer-controlled rigs, and Life Was Much Simpler.
The overall performance level of rigs was lower, as a result.

Nowadays the commercial gear is *SO* much more advanced than anything
the average ham can design and build[1], or even build from a design
someone else worked out, that it's just easier to buy an appliance to
get the performance one wants. Construction is hard, it requires time
and expensive materials, and the overall bill for the appliance most
of the time is less than it would cost (including time) to build a
comparable device.

[1] There are exceptions, and they appear as showcase examples in
the ARRL Handbook and other places.

--
Mike Andrews, W5EGO/AE, 5 WPM Extra (But working on getting faster!)

Tired old sysadmin