On Jun 13, 1:19 am, N2EY wrote:
On Jun 12, 4:51 pm, Radio K HB wrote:

"N2EY" wrote in message
..
..

I see it more as an acceptance of reality
that many if not most hams
today don't build their own rigs, even from kits.

The "advancement of the SoTA" clause MUST
remain in our basis and purpose
charter, else the next step would be to DENY
us the privilege of putting our
experiments on the air.

That's one I hadn't thought of, Hans.

And it's a valid point.

I might point out that technical advancement does not have to be
furtherance of some basic science or physics. Indeed, I think Gordon
has missed the boat a little here. He's looking at it from a RF
centric view. The person that applied phase shift keying with a
computer sound card with programming on a computer is also performing
advancement of the art. This sort of thing is largely overlooked
because many amateurs are thinking that unless it is the discovery of
say one particular GHz frequency that otherwise behaves like 160
meters, it isn't worthwhile. It's a fairly mature science, and our
advancements are incremental. But we've done a lot more advancement
than Gordon gives us credit for.

Also moving the voluntary service to the lead position is a bit of a
concern. It's an argument that's a bit old, but as the ARS works out
it's problems with the emergency folks, moving it to the head of the
list is just possibly a bit of a step backwards. As I've noted in the
past the local folks who said they were going to declare eminent
domain on our repeater would have loved to point out that their work
is our primary purpose for existence.