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Hi John,
Well, great men have come and gone, what are some younger names which will be taking on these challenges of the future? I think Rick Campbell has gotta be 30-something or 40-something? I know one of his former professors, and that professor has only been a teacher for something like a decade now... To some degree, younger folks are out there working at their day jobs. Not that I'll know for another few decades, but I expect that retirement gives one a lot of time to 'catch up' on their favorite ham persuits. Bob Larkin designed the DSP-10 software defined radio back in 1999 and -- while I'm making a lot of guesses here -- I believe that was not too long after Celwave (now defunct) bought his small company where he was designing and producing cell phone base station equipment and thereby allowed him a little more free time to design and publish for the amateur community. I don't expect people in their 50's on up to be the innovators, it is the younger crowd who has been educated in universities, with access to the newest state of the art labs available which will be taking on these projects--that is a given, I never though different... Colleges today are a very different place than they were, say, 30 or more years ago. At least here in the US, it's pretty much "expected" that everyone at least attempts to receive a higher education, and this has caused a large change in college curriculum. To put it bluntly, it's become dumbed down and a shockingly large percentage of the students there really don't _want_ a highly challenging, rigorous five years -- they want a decent income in a reasonably secure industry (computers and electronics). Industry goes along with this because, realistically, what they need are predominently technician level employees and not true innovators or researchers. Of course, for people truly interested in learning and innovating, there are probably more opportunities now than ever before (think of what Einstein could have done if he had been born in 1980...). What I'm arguing here is that it shouldn't be surprising that an increase in the number of college students and the availability of high quality test equipment doesn't translate into some phenomenally large spike in the innovation seen in amateur radio. There is plenty of innovation going on in amateur radio right now. Winlink 2000 is a good example: many of the people who support it are the younger set, and many of the people who oppose it are the 'geriatric' crowd! Some of the true technical problems with WL2K -- such as the lack of busy detectors, best performance being obtained only with the proprietary PACTOR 3 modems, etc. -- have spurred additional innovation with results such as SCAMP. I actually find it quite surprising that the most "digital radio" innovation seems to occur on the HF bands rather than VHF or above, but I expect this will change in the not so distant future. (I've mentioned before that personally I'm eyeing the 220MHz band -- very much neglected for many years now -- as prime territory for digital experimentation...) ---Joel |
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