I haven't belittled anybody's contribution to anything.

Ham Radio is a technical pursuit.

CB Radio is a hobby.

CBers and CBers-Masquerading-As-Radio-Hams contribute
to the hobby of CB and not to the technical pursuit that is Ham Radio.

Those who are not technically motivated nor technically qualified
are unsuitable as Ham Radio licensees.

"Tom Donaly" wrote in message
om...
Airy R. Bean wrote:
I think that you are confusing my wish to preserve Ham
Radio as a technical pursuit with your own mental processes
which you project so well below.
Perhaps it is that you are an unwitting CBer-Masquerading-
As-A-Radio-Ham who is annoyed at being "outed" and which
annoyance results in you revealing the innermost workings
of your psyche as below?
It is a very exciting and inspiring thing to continue to
educate yourself in all matters of technology - try it and
you'll find that there is more to Ham Radio than your
own CBisation of it!

"Tom Donaly" wrote in message
. com...
If you're trying to "preserve Ham Radio as a technical pursuit,"
you won't do it by belittling other's contributions to the hobby.

Your resorting to rather silly and childish broadcasting (CB)
in your infantile outbursts below would seem to confirm that
you are a CBer.

Ham Radio has traditions of international gentlemanly conduct
which seem to be lost on you.

Sic transit gloria Mundi.

This is a "homebrew" NG for _REAL_ Radio Hams. I fear that
you and your rants are somewhat out of place herein.

"Tom Donaly" wrote in message
om...
You will however reinforce other's belief that you're just another
grouchy, old, British crackpot who is constantly getting exercised
over what other people consider trivial matters.

Airy R. Bean wrote:
Your resorting to rather silly and childish broadcasting (CB)
in your infantile outbursts below would seem to confirm that
you are a CBer.

Ham Radio has traditions of international gentlemanly conduct
which seem to be lost on you

Sic transit gloria Mundi.

This is a "homebrew" NG for _REAL_ Radio Hams. I fear that
you and your rants are somewhat out of place herein.

"Tom Donaly" wrote in message
om...

You will however reinforce other's belief that you're just another
grouchy, old, British crackpot who is constantly getting exercised
over what other people consider trivial matters.




Well, I'm glad to hear that you're a real Smithfield, Airy, and can
look down on those of us non-technicians who don't share your narrow
view of Ham Radio. Every hobby needs its share of tin-pot deities to
provide comic relief to its other practitioners. Carry on, m'boy.
73,
Tom Donaly, KA6RUH

snip
Only a relative handful of people build their own planes, vs.
650,000 hams in the USA alone. About the closest group to beating us in
public visibility is probably those guys and gals with the battling robots
with buzz saws on PBS robot wars, right? ;-) ;-)
==========================
How many of the above 650,000 hams have really built something in connection
with amateur radio ?

Frank GM0CSZ / KN6WH

quoting:
CBers and CBers-Masquerading-As-Radio-Hams contribute
to the hobby of CB and not to the technical pursuit that is Ham Radio.

Those who are not technically motivated nor technically qualified
are unsuitable as Ham Radio licensees.
unquote:

you may be right - in Germany (per your path)?

But here in the USA, the justification for amateur radio spectrum and
existence is called PICON - public interest, convenience, or necessity.
The goal is communications at the most basic level. Technical pursuits or
qualifications are not a core concern of the licensing body (FCC).

You also have to be careful about such issues as "technically qualified",
since it requires someone to define who is qualified, what they need to be
qualified in, and why ;-)

The USA's licensing body (FCC) has defined a rather basic set of core
technical competencies for the entry level licenses, and most advanced
countries seem to have similar modest technical standards (the old Soviet
system may be an exception etc. where you had to build your own radio
station?).

Now flip thru an RSGB or ARRL handbook, and ask yourself how many of the
various modes and bands and projects have _you_ done? ;-) I am still doing
new stuff (VLF beacons, modulated lasers for field day's 3 modes credit
etc.), which means I am certainly not technically qualified in all the
areas of ham radio yet ;-) Plus they keep inventing new ones all the time.

in short, if you feel you are "technically competent" in (all of) ham
radio, you may not be paying enough attention to all that's going on. ;-)

Finally, when the chips are down and ham radio has to prove its value thru
emergency communications or whatever, there are lots of very technically
competent folks who aren't setup or interested or trained in providing
such communications. So the laurels often go to those who some might
deride as "appliance operators" who are able to provide such
communications. Many of those folks are just as elite and capable in
their own areas of ham radio as those with a more technical bent might be
in ours...

grins bobm

--
************************************************** *********************
* Robert Monaghan POB 752182 Southern Methodist Univ. Dallas Tx 75275 *
********************Standard Disclaimers Apply*************************

answer: roughly half, since that's the USA proportion who have gotten on
the air with their own station, which usually involves system tradeoff
studies and system integration issues, if nothing else, antenna building
and location, and so on. Not the answer you expected? ;-)

I keep meaning to write an article for QST on A.R.S.E. - amateur radio
system engineers (grins), following up on Forest Mims III observation in
Nuts and VOlts that electronic hobbyists no longer work much at the
component level (thanks largely to microcontrollers and integrated chips
(PLAs...). Most of us work at subsystem level in projects (at least in
terms of decades past).

On the other hand, the amateur radio systems many of us have are far more
complex, with lots more interactions (e.g., software issues, antenna
interactions for multi-bands and modes, satellite orbit predictions, and
more modes and bands of operation than the 3 or 5 band AM/CW or SSB/CW
rigs of the 1950s and 1970s. We have five different types of antenna coax
connectors on our dual band ATV system, between two transmitters, beam
antennas, preamps, downconverters, and all the rest.

And yeah, I have EE and CSE graduate degrees as well as a systems
engineering grad degree; but the reason they pay systems engineers more on
average is that making things work together well (hardware, software..) is
often far harder than designing or building the components. Read
comp.risks digest to see something of what I mean ;-)

And fyi, practically all the designs now are done on computer (from boeing
777 down), and lots of graduating engineers have minimal exposure to
building anything either (usually just a simple senior design project,
maybe a few kits on the side). There is very little of the cut and try
approach often illustrated here ;-)

On the other hand, they may have designed microprocessor cores and tested
them in software, which would have been far beyond some of the heroic and
epic hardware designs of just 30 years ago (see my serial #186 example of
the world's first microcomputer (Intel 4004 from 1972) at
http://people.smu.edu/rmonagha/4004.html ).

grins bobm
--
************************************************** *********************
* Robert Monaghan POB 752182 Southern Methodist Univ. Dallas Tx 75275 *
********************Standard Disclaimers Apply*************************

from http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=robot

A mechanical device that sometimes resembles a human and is capable of
performing a variety of often complex human tasks on command or by being
programmed in advance.

A machine or device that operates automatically or by remote control.
endquote:

Depends on your definition and viewpoint; sad to say, virtually all the
world's working robots in factories bear little resemblance to humans
(other than the demo walking robot from Japan, I guess? ;-0)

We had an IEEE sponsored contest to build software for battlefield robots
some years ago (late 1980s IIRC?). End up looking like a video game, which
is what the students wanted to build anyway. ;-)

I'm recording a 2 hour PBS program on videogame revolution tonight, so I
suspect it will be deja vu. However, Tom Clancy, the noted author of Red
October etc., made a point when on campus last year that the military is
using videogames corp. for training, and that the years of hand-eye
coordination training from gaming was a big plus in preparing young men
and women to utilize incredibly complex systems with videogame style
interfaces.

Personally, I wouldn't _want_ an autonomous battlefield robot without
using some human interaction in the loop. No sense making the term "killer
software bugs" come true ;-)

grins bobm
--
************************************************** *********************
* Robert Monaghan POB 752182 Southern Methodist Univ. Dallas Tx 75275 *
********************Standard Disclaimers Apply*************************

On 9 Sep 2004 21:46:11 -0500, (Bob Monaghan)
wrote:

Finally, when the chips are down and ham radio has to prove its value thru
emergency communications or whatever, there are lots of very technically
competent folks who aren't setup or interested or trained in providing
such communications. So the laurels often go to those who some might
deride as "appliance operators" who are able to provide such
communications. Many of those folks are just as elite and capable in
their own areas of ham radio as those with a more technical bent might be
in ours...

I don't see what's so elite about buying a black box off a shelf,
connecting it up and shouting into it, as most of them do, when the
other station is distant - regardless of quality of reception. Sure,
black box operators may save the day in the event of an emergency, but
the degree of study, experimentation and practice they have to undergo
to pull it off is minimal at best and demands zero respect, IMV.
--

"What is now proved was once only imagin'd." - William Blake, 1793.

I am afraid that you are mistaken, and once again it
is your own personality defects that shine through.
I do not look down upon anybody.

CBers and CBers-Masquerading-As-Radio-Hams
are merely following a different pursuit to that which I follow,
as, indeed, are fishermen, needleworkers, football
players and supports, and RC model exponents.

They are merely fellow humans who do not share my interests
and so I do not associate with them.

That you once again resort to rather silly and childish forms
of self-expression below reinforces the perception that
you are a CBer and not a Radio Ham.

"Tom Donaly" wrote in message
. com...
Well, I'm glad to hear that you're a real Smithfield, Airy, and can
look down on those of us non-technicians who don't share your narrow
view of Ham Radio. Every hobby needs its share of tin-pot deities to
provide comic relief to its other practitioners. Carry on, m'boy.

Ham Radio is what Hams do, and not what the regulatory
powers seek to restrict.

Radio Hams are technical people. Those who buy radios
off-the-shelf, notwithstanding that they may have qualified
as Hams are behaving as CBers and are viewed as such.

"Bob Monaghan" wrote in message
...
quoting:
CBers and CBers-Masquerading-As-Radio-Hams contribute
to the hobby of CB and not to the technical pursuit that is Ham Radio.

Those who are not technically motivated nor technically qualified
are unsuitable as Ham Radio licensees.
unquote:

you may be right - in Germany (per your path)?

But here in the USA, the justification for amateur radio spectrum and
existence is called PICON - public interest, convenience, or necessity.
The goal is communications at the most basic level. Technical pursuits or
qualifications are not a core concern of the licensing body (FCC).

You also have to be careful about such issues as "technically qualified",
since it requires someone to define who is qualified, what they need to be
qualified in, and why ;-)

The USA's licensing body (FCC) has defined a rather basic set of core
technical competencies for the entry level licenses, and most advanced
countries seem to have similar modest technical standards (the old Soviet
system may be an exception etc. where you had to build your own radio
station?).

Now flip thru an RSGB or ARRL handbook, and ask yourself how many of the
various modes and bands and projects have _you_ done? ;-) I am still doing
new stuff (VLF beacons, modulated lasers for field day's 3 modes credit
etc.), which means I am certainly not technically qualified in all the
areas of ham radio yet ;-) Plus they keep inventing new ones all the time.

in short, if you feel you are "technically competent" in (all of) ham
radio, you may not be paying enough attention to all that's going on. ;-)

Finally, when the chips are down and ham radio has to prove its value thru
emergency communications or whatever, there are lots of very technically
competent folks who aren't setup or interested or trained in providing
such communications. So the laurels often go to those who some might
deride as "appliance operators" who are able to provide such
communications. Many of those folks are just as elite and capable in
their own areas of ham radio as those with a more technical bent might be
in ours...

grins bobm

--
************************************************** *********************
* Robert Monaghan POB 752182 Southern Methodist Univ. Dallas Tx 75275 *
********************Standard Disclaimers Apply*************************