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#11
April 20th 05, 03:32 PM
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Michael A. Terrell wrote:
wrote: Most of the hams I knew as a kid were home brewers. They were not designers but they could build a piece of equipment form a magazine article or the handbook. I lived about an hour from Mendelson's in dayton Ohio, and I ran into a lot of hams there, digging through the unmarked bins of parts to build their latest project or repair one of their projects. Been there, did that. I built my first SW receiver from junk parts I picked up along Radio Row in Philly. Radio Merit Badge booklet in hand circa 1950. Things have changed a bit since then though . . . (?!) In general the average ham learns as much about electronics as he/she needs to satisfy their enjoyment of the hobby. Which on average ain't much in this day of cheap whizzy plug 'n play equipment. Beast on reality as you might but that's the way it is. The whole idea of a rig that isn't intended to be serviced is what kills my interest in the hobby. Too many custom parts made of "Unobtaium" and refusing to release schematics and manuals Maybe it's happened but personally I've never heard of an instance of anyone with a broken mainstream radio not being able to fix it or get it fixed because the manuals and/or the schematics couldn't be located. Parts are another story but that's SOP. Try to buy all the parts for a 1980 Ford from a dealer. really don't inspire any confidence in imported whiz bang rigs. All commodity widgets have design lifetimes particularly when they are based in the fast-moving field of electronics Japanese and otherwise. But there are tens of thousands of 20-year-old pieces of complex ham gear still regularly on the air. I can't imagine why you would expect any more than that for the service life of chunks of entertainment electronics. Not that I prefer tube only rigs, but they were built to do their job for years. Maybe the rest of the ham's life if he took decent care of his equipment. A lot of newer rigs end up as parts units because some cheap component is NLA. Do you think many of these all plastic LCD display radios will still work when they are 20 years old? I have no idea but a buddy of mine has an IC-781 xcvr which cost him over $6k 18 years ago and it's color LCD display still works as well as it did out-of-the-box. Boeing is replacing the conventional instruments in it's airliner panels with color LCD panels which better last 20 years and more or Boeing is gonna get spanked plenty. I was told that a couple retired EEs in the local club did all their repairs and I didn't know enough to be of any help. Then they told me to "stuff" my offer of free electronic components to help them with repairs. Are you kidding? That's nuts. With all due respect I'd like to hear the other side of that one. In this sense and given the obvious lack of interest in the arcane details of electronics amongst the average members of the average neighborhood ham radio club you should not have known that your offer to participate was a no-counter. They don't "maintain" their radios, they don't need your expertise, they simply ship their broken radios off to the repair shops to get fixed. In short "Now You're Talking" fits their agenda and your's simply does not. In another sense ham radio clubs are private entities conventionally for hams and prospective hams only. As an analogy what you did was show up at a bow-hunters club with a .45-70 powder-burner and expect any interest in an offer to "help". w3rv Sorry, but that analogy just doesn't work. Several members told me they wanted to do minor repairs on their equipment but they didn't have access to the tools or equipment anymore. I offered them free use of my shop and to give them most of the components from my old repair business if I had what they needed and was laughed at. Makes no sense at all, I'd leap on an offer like that if I needed acess to an RF bench because I'm really ill-equipped in this area. Must be something in their water. As far as weapons, I have used a bow but I prefer an M-72. ;-) Yeah, RIGHT . . ! Whoosh: Thud. So re-up, Rumsfeld is offering bonuses. A lot of hams in Ohio were glad that I was willing to help out including an old ham in his late 70s that brought me a home brew receiver that a SK friend of his had built 20 years before. He had lost the hand drawn schematics and had a tear rolling down his cheek as he asked if there was any way I could possibly help him. He told me that he had been to every two way shop and ham equipment dealer to try to find someone to work on it and that one of them told him I was the only one in the county crazy enough to even attempt a repair. I tore it down and found a couple burnt resistors and shorted caps. I did a little math, dug around and found the parts. He was crying when the receiver came to life and kept thanking me. I charged him $10 and he hurried home to get back on the air. Helping someone like that is better than spending hours on the air to me. Nice job. Could not agree more. In a contorted way it appears that thee and me are basically the same basic breed of radio alley cat. Bear with me here. It's a tale. I got into ham radio over a half century because I wanted to move up from SWLing and just reading National Geographic as a kid to get on the air and communicate with others in foreign places. I'm still at it and in my mind the magic of DXing the HF airwaves hasn't diminished a bit. Here's part of the convergence: For the most part I simply can't stand most neighborhood radio clubs for all the reasons you've cited recently here and there in this NG. The poltics, the general clulessness, the rambling disorganization, the lack of interest in my particular hot buttons, etc. So I don't bother with 'em. Different strokes? You bet. I found my "cure" for the local radio clubs many years ago. I'm a member of a wide-area regional ham club which is tightly focused of HF DXing and DX contesting, a bunch who have the same narrow interests I have. Works for me, maybe the format would work for you. There's some huge number of electronics hobbyists across the country including hams who get their jollies from tube electronics. Since you're in what amounts to "geezer alley" in central Florida I expect that there is a higher concentration of "tube huggers"there than one would find elsewhere in the country. If I had your interests and lived where you do I'd seriously consider poking around the area for others of your ilk to clump with and form some sort of club centered on tube radio, etc. -- Former professional electron wrangler. Michael A. Terrell Central Florida w3rv |
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