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#21
October 19th 06, 12:14 AM
posted to rec.radio.amateur.boatanchors,rec.radio.amateur.homebrew,rec.radio.amateur.policy,rec.radio.swap
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Question for the group. Mainly new hams.
Chuck Harris wrote:
wrote: Chuck Harris wrote: 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. One way to promote a mode is to give it significant band space. 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 difference is that only Morse Code requires skills that the average person does not have. The impolite behavior seems to center around SSB. Probably because the mode requires essentially no effort. Maybe. I think there are many causes. 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. They were a few out of hundreds of thousands. And yes, they all passed the Morse Code test - supposedly, anyhow. But they also passed one or more *written* tests which included questions on acceptable on-air behavior. Why don't the written tests get the blame? Look at the recent case of Jack Gerritsen, ex-KG6IRO. What possible reason is there for his behavior? 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. Some are, some aren't - IMHO. 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. The rigs that gave us headaches were only a few years old. 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. Bingo. 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. Are those really customer demands, or are they driven by the manufacturers who want to sell more radios? ... 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. Very possible. 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. It was the other way around. Bash did his thing in the early 1970s. The VE system came to be in the early 1980s. The VE system put Bash out of business because the question pools became public then. ... 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. Same here - except I'm still homebrewing. My general belief is if you have passed the test that is in force, you are a ham... period. Agreed! Beyond passing whatever is required, I don't care how you got here, just what you do now that you are here. Agreed again! 73 de Jim, N2EY |
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