On Fri, 8 Jan 2016, gareth wrote:

... For those of us who became interested at the time of the
transition from thermionic devices to semiconductors, that
in 1965 a household might have less than 35 active devices
in total (25 in the colour TV, 7 in the transistor radio) and now we
have countless millions mostly in computerisation of one sort
or another.

Is it, I wonder the degree of integration in off-the-shelf
electronics that is the prime cause of the lack of technical
acumen and interest in home construction to be found
these days, especially in the under-educated NuHams
who cannot even tell one end of a resistor from the other?

That might account for recent things, but it took some time before surface
mount and really integrated ICs came along. And don't forget, most of the
semiconconductor manufacturers from 1970 have either changed drastically,
or the division sold off.

Yes, it is fascinating that the average home had so little electronics in
1971, and then circa 1975, there was an endless flow, if you didn't have
it, you thought about it. That is a major shift, and suddenly all kinds
of things that could cause interference, and all those clocks added in
because it cost nothing to add a clock function once the electronics were
designed (so you'd end up with clocks all over the place, none having the
same time, which then caused "atomic clocks" to become popular much later
when they became cheap).

But the introduction of ICs were a really great period. Lots of
interesting analog ICs, and they kept coming. There were some great RF
type ICs, which in the end died off because demand wasn't there, or later
shifted to other techniques.

But those National and Plessey ICs in the early seventies probably
increased building, a shift where "simple receiver" went from a regen to a
superhet, because the ICs made it simpler.

But circa 1971, the IC market was often for the non-consumer. It slowly
shifted to the consumer, which meant more and more specialized and
concentrated ICs that had little use other than in a specific circuit.
But the money was there, consumer electronics sold in way larger
quantities, and they needed it. A ham rig was too specialized, high
integration could bring the price down only so much, but save some money
on a consumer piece of equipment, and the price dropped quite a bit, which
was made up in large sales quantity.

Any consumer device, they started out expensive, big and using standard
parts. That applies to that dot matrix printer I got in 1982, any early
VCR, or early cellphones. You could open them up and see standard parts,
not just through-hole devices, but CPUs that were recognized and fairly
low integration devices that could be used elsehwere. But to bring prices
down for the consumer, they had to ramp up and manufacturing had to
decrease in cost, so they moved from metal to plastic and used higher
integration devices. So that equipment is fairly bare now, not loads of
ICs on multiple circuit boards. But they are also very much machine
built, since that's way cheaper. And repair is too expensive, compared to
the cost of the item.

Now things have changed, but this is about 50 years after the IC showed up
in hobby circles. Fifty years before that it was 1915, radio barely going
anywhere, tubes used only if you had the money and you were lucky.
Another fifty years, and things will likely be very different too.

SOme of the failure is more attitude. "We can't compete with the
internet" say the old men who forgot what it was like to be a kid and
learning about amateur radio for the first time. You don't compete, you
present the alternative. "Kids today use technology all the time", but
it's a mainstreamed technology, it's not about creating something or doing
something different, it's not even really about technology, it's about
using very advanced gadgetry. I knew someone who always complained about
"technology", but she drove a car, and the minute she got home, she'd
check her answering machine, and she was tied to her landline phone. SHe
was very mired in technology, except those things were mainstream.
Computes and cellphones and whatever have now become that sort of thing,
people get to be cool because they have the latest iPhone, but there is a
big difference between their skill with "technology" and some kid forty
years ago. Now, they are users, maybe more skilled than some, but they
don't really know technology. The kid in 1975 learning about computers
knew a whole lot more.

The minute people say "hams don't build anymore" is to be part of the
problem, because it's not true, even though it's now more hidden. But if
you start from that attitude, then you get real problems, like with QST
shifting technical articles elsewhere. They'd run articles on parametric
amplifiers and moonbounce and really down in the noise receiving
techniques, and whether or not most readers ignored it, it was there, no
extra step needed. Now they have "QEX" that costs quite a bit, and even
more if you aren't an ARRL member, and it has the technical articles.
When they aren't in front of you, then it's easy to be somewhere else.

Michael