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Chuck Harris

wrote:
Chuck Harris wrote:

I don't remember that at all.
Well, you wouldn't if you spent all of your time on CW.

Good point!

Things are very
polite on those subbands.

Isn't that a reason to promote the mode?

To promote the mode, sure, but to require it no. I could make the same claim
about RTTY, and Slow Scan. When they were popular, folks on those modes were
all as polite as could be.

The impolite behavior seems to center around SSB. Probably because the mode
requires essentially no effort.

If however, you ever listened to 20 meters
around 14.313, you might have a different idea of what ham radio was about.
For some reason that frequency was full of profane garbage mouthed hams,
and lots of infighting in the '70s and '80s.

Sure. But how many hams were involved, out of the hundreds of thousands
on the air?

It only takes a few. As I remember from those SSB wars in the '70's and
'80's, a several hams were prosecuted. They were all General Class or higher.
And because of the time frame, in which they were licensed, they had passed
the CW hurdle. I recall that playing with their keyers on the SSB segment was
part of their hijinks. A whole lot of "FU" and other acronyms were mixed in
with the echo boxes, and microphone raking.

I haven't noticed that things are any worse now. About the only real
difference is in the quality of the gear folks are running. It is
much better than the crappy stuff that was on the air back in the
early 70's.
There were good and bad rigs then as well as now.
Perhaps, but nothing like some of the very cheap sweep tube transceivers of
the late 1960's, and early '70's. Swans that drifted furiously, and practically
invented the term TVI...

Sure - but remember that those rigs were designed 40+ years ago. They
should be judged by the standards of their time.

And I was. But today's rigs, when judged by the ear are more pleasant to
listen to.

What are the bad HF SSB rigs of today? I would bet that even the absolute
worst is cleaner than anything that was available in the '60's, and '70's...
If only because the regulations got tighter on spurious emissions from new
gear.

It depends on what you consider "bad". Last FD we had some rigs that
were unusable because they put out wideband phase noise that messed up
stations on adjacent bands! Those rigs might have met the letter of the
law when new, but they sure made a lot of hash in the real world.

Fortunately, that wideband phase noise doesn't carry beyond a few hundred
yards from the radio. It used to be a really big problem with the early
solid state radios... But not so much so with the newer rigs. Field Day was
where I first noticed the effect.... Key the mike, and all bands were awash
in hiss, even before the first word was spoken. Icom comes to mind.
Having a Clegg FM27B around on field day is a real treat too...not!

OTOH, serviceability of many ham rigs is very low. Even if you can deal
with SMT, a lot of them use house-numbered parts that become unobtanium
in a few years.

Entirely the result of meeting the customer's demands for in expensive
feature laden radios that fit in packages smaller than a dictionary.

....
It did not have the exact questions and answers in it.
I looked at friend's copy of one of the the license manuals that was available
after my test, and the questions and answers were very close. It was nothing
like the manuals that are available today, but still so close as to be a cheat.

There were a couple of different license manuals available back then.

The ARRL LM was a reprint of FCC's study guide. Those FCC study guides
were produced by FCC to indicate the areas of knowledge you needed to
have for the test. They were essay format even though the tests were
multiple-choice.

AMECO and others rewrote them into multiple choice format.

I think my friends "manual" might have been Ameco.

A fellow named Dick Bash stationed himself outside FCC offices and
bought information from people who had just taken the tests. He was
able to recreate a pretty close version of the actual test by that
method. FCC decided not to prosecute him even though he published books
that were very close to the actual tests.

I don't think Bash was doing that until after the VE system came on line...
but I don't recall for sure.

....
What good are technical *discussions* if they don't translate into
actual working radio systems?
I have built and operated a number of entirely home brew radios.

Exactly. *You* are not an appliance operator - nor are you calling
anybody else an appliance operator.

Actually, these days for what little operating I do, I am an appliance
operator. Because of my early ham experience, and the fact that I am
an EE, I know how to design and build, even if I don't chose to do so
right now. Ham radio probably figures heavily in my being an EE.

My general belief is if you have passed the test that is in force, you
are a ham... period. Beyond passing whatever is required, I don't care
how you got here, just what you do now that you are here.

-Chuck