On Thu, 4 Oct 2018, Gareth's Downstairs Computer wrote:
On 04/10/2018 20:53, Ralph Mowery wrote:
In article ,
says...
With the whole tool only $ 20 to $ 25 it hardly seems worth the effort
to even spend the time to make a set of jaws.
The argument of a CBer and not a real radio ham?
No, I try not to waste my time on the mechanical things. I have 3 or 4
of the crimp type tools. They are almost as inexpensive to buy the
whole tool as one tool and several sets of jaws.
Keeping up 2 ham repeaters, learning how the Arduino works, putting
together uBITX and latest is a boat anchor station takes up lots of
time. I am not that good at the mechanical things so for inexpensive
tools it is easier for me to buy them.
The cheapest thing that you can go out and buy is far more
expensive than the costliest thing in your junkbox. I have a
small stock of metal and a small machine shop, although I have
just given away the 3D printer that was lying idle for the past
3 years; its rationale having disappeared with the lifting of
the 16mm O gauge garden railway.
Rude comments apart, the essence of amateur radio in my book is
always doing for yourself the maximum that you can.
And that allows for a variable definition.
I had to tell you this, but in 1972 when someone needed to put some
holesin a chassis for tube sockets, the ham who ran the local code &
theory class, an "oldtimer", didn't have the right size punch, so he
provided money and we went to the store downtown and got one, the other
guy punched his holes and then the "oldtimer" had that size punch.
I guess one should be making their own hole punches, even though they
don't directly have anything to do with ham radio.
Those Greenlee punches were expensive in 1972, at least when you were a
kid with limited funds. But boy, I've seen people quote prices in recent
years, and what a great deal they were in 1972.
We don't roll our own capacitors, though decades ago I did read a magazine
article about how to do it, actually rolling paper and foil to make
capacitors. It was dated then, since there were better capacitors than
those made with paper. But trying something is fine, though I got the
idea just from reading it, no need to actually make them.
If you insist on "making everything" then you'll never get anywhere, since
you'll always be needing to make some lower level part or tool to make a
higher level part or tool that you'll never get to putting those hand
crafted components into circuits.
Yes, building is an important part of amateur radio and there's been too
much of a shift away from it, so in the US entry level is 2M FM, when
decades ago it would be HF and a home made simple transmitter, usually
with some low end junk receiver. But it was at least an entry, something
taht no longer happens. Here in Canada, since 1990, the entry level
licesne does not allow the use of home made transmitters. so it's really
simple to get the license, but then the entry point has to be different
from decades ago.
That sort of thing is far more damaging to ham radio than whether someone
buys a tool or makes it from scratch.
Michael