Hi John,

Well, great men have come and gone, what are some younger names which will
be taking on these challenges of the future?

I think Rick Campbell has gotta be 30-something or 40-something? I know one
of his former professors, and that professor has only been a teacher for
something like a decade now...

To some degree, younger folks are out there working at their day jobs. Not
that I'll know for another few decades, but I expect that retirement gives one
a lot of time to 'catch up' on their favorite ham persuits. Bob Larkin
designed the DSP-10 software defined radio back in 1999 and -- while I'm
making a lot of guesses here -- I believe that was not too long after Celwave
(now defunct) bought his small company where he was designing and producing
cell phone base station equipment and thereby allowed him a little more free
time to design and publish for the amateur community.

I don't expect people in their 50's on up to be the innovators, it is the
younger crowd who has been educated in universities, with access to the
newest state of the art labs available which will be taking on these
projects--that is a given, I never though different...

Colleges today are a very different place than they were, say, 30 or more
years ago. At least here in the US, it's pretty much "expected" that everyone
at least attempts to receive a higher education, and this has caused a large
change in college curriculum. To put it bluntly, it's become dumbed down and
a shockingly large percentage of the students there really don't _want_ a
highly challenging, rigorous five years -- they want a decent income in a
reasonably secure industry (computers and electronics). Industry goes along
with this because, realistically, what they need are predominently technician
level employees and not true innovators or researchers.

Of course, for people truly interested in learning and innovating, there are
probably more opportunities now than ever before (think of what Einstein could
have done if he had been born in 1980...). What I'm arguing here is that it
shouldn't be surprising that an increase in the number of college students and
the availability of high quality test equipment doesn't translate into some
phenomenally large spike in the innovation seen in amateur radio.

There is plenty of innovation going on in amateur radio right now. Winlink
2000 is a good example: many of the people who support it are the younger set,
and many of the people who oppose it are the 'geriatric' crowd! Some of the
true technical problems with WL2K -- such as the lack of busy detectors, best
performance being obtained only with the proprietary PACTOR 3 modems, etc. --
have spurred additional innovation with results such as SCAMP. I actually
find it quite surprising that the most "digital radio" innovation seems to
occur on the HF bands rather than VHF or above, but I expect this will change
in the not so distant future. (I've mentioned before that personally I'm
eyeing the 220MHz band -- very much neglected for many years now -- as prime
territory for digital experimentation...)

---Joel