On Wed, 12 Jul 2006 00:49:48 GMT, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:

Can you say "Yes, I ar wun"?

Can't you spell any better than that?

A spelling flame! I'm vanquished!

So, Al. Can you tell us how many receivers or transmitters have you
built from scratch? Not from a kit, or someone else's design, but from
scratch? Drew a block diagram that was converted to a real schematic
one block at a time where you did all the math, laid out the chassis,
cut and drilled all the holes and built the equipment all by yourself?

3 receivers, about a dozen transmitters. Oh, yes, and the automation
system of the Hong Kong Space Museum planetarium, the old Amtrak
ticket printer, some software that's in use in over 50,000
installations around the world ...

But I'm not the typical ham, I've been a design engineer for a long
time.

What is the biggest transmitter you've ever built or used? I'm a
disabled now, but I worked in broadcast

Never built anything over a kilowatt, but engineered some pretty hefty
ones. (Ch. 40 in Waterbury CT, WWRL, WHN, a few others.)

(You remind me of an IBM HR department of old. They always wanted to
know the largest program the applicant ever wrote. Someone
legitimately told them, back when software was a few k, that he'd
written a 3 meg program. It was a translation program with a 3 meg
dictionary. You're playing "mine is bigger than yours.")

Tell us, what can you do other than whine? Have you ever built a commercial TV station from
scratch?

All by myself, no. Ever build a planetarium automation system all by
yourself from scratch (including inventing some of the technology -
which is still, after 30 years, state of the art)? But I'm not going
to get into a ****ing contest with you. If you were mentally as old
as you claim your body to be you wouldn't have started one.

I found CW boring years ago, and have some hearing problems so I said
to hell with Morse code and got involved in the equipment design end of
things. It was more fun for me to develop a design and built it, get it
aligned and working, then move on to the next design.

Since I totally depend on 2 4 channel BTE aids, I can't receive CW
that easily any more, but that's not a good reason for the FCC to drop
the requirement. It's not even a bad reason. But when anyone can
guess well enough to pass the "technical" part of the exam, the
license isn't worth much.