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-   -   [FOAR] If they're shooting at you - you know you're doing something right! (https://www.radiobanter.com/info/234834-%5Bfoar%5D-if-theyre-shooting-you-you-know-youre-doing-something-right.html)

FOAR via rec.radio.info Admin March 4th 17 11:00 PM

[FOAR] If they're shooting at you - you know you're doing something right!
 

Foundations of Amateur Radio

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If they're shooting at you - you know you're doing something right!

Posted: 04 Mar 2017 09:00 AM PST


Foundations of Amateur Radio There's a quote from a television show that
speaks greatly to me. "If they're shooting at you - you know you're doing
something right!" I've been producing this weekly recording since May of
2011. It started life as "What use is an F-call?" and the first episode was
recorded in response to an Amateur who bemoaned their transmitter power
restrictions associated with their beginners license - when I used the same
power to speak to a station 15,000km away the week before. I named the
segment after the common term for my license - a Foundation License - in
Australia known as an F-call. It's the so-called beginner's license,
something you can get by spending a weekend with a book and passing a test
that introduces you to the hobby of Amateur Radio. Since that first
recording I've produced 296 different episodes, it was renamed
to "Foundations of Amateur Radio" and I started putting the recording
online as a podcast. In those episodes I've covered many different topics,
from what to spend your money on, how to get started, what antenna's do and
how you can build them, how different technologies work and what the
Amateur Radio community is like. A recurring theme in my recordings is the
attitude of other Amateurs to those who are starting in the hobby. I come
back to it regularly because I keep getting emails from listeners who are
subjected to varying levels of abuse by other Amateurs. I've taken to going
to the Amateur Training College to explain that Amateurs are a mixed lot,
many wonderful people and some rotten apples who make a lot of noise. I
have had messages detailing abhorrent behaviour and read messages of those
who left the hobby because of it. Fortunately the opposite is also true. I
have messages from people who came back to this amazing adventure and got
inspired by some of the things I've said and used this to rekindle their
interest, or to finally go for their license, or to finally pluck up the
courage and press the Push To Talk button on their radio and speak. We all
make mistakes. I know I do. Sometimes I even find out that I made a
mistake. For example, last week an Amateur told me that I'd claimed to have
had 45 years of Computing Experience, which would make me a toddler when I
started. Turns out he's right, I did claim that. Whoops. I meant to say 35
years, but wait for a bit and 45 years will be close enough. It's a shame
that he didn't comment on the actual content of the segment, namely that we
have a pre-conceived idea of what constitutes an Amateur, even though that
is a changing thing. The episode is called "We should stop requiring
electronics to be amateurs.", episode 28 of Foundations of Amateur Radio if
you're interested. It's also a shame that he didn't point out a much
larger error, in my episodes about chickens, but another Amateur, who sat
on this for some time because he wasn't sure, caught up with me for lunch
and we discussed in great detail what our common understanding was. We're
still working out how exactly I explain what I said and how it differs from
reality, suffice to say, I'm a curious kind-of-guy and I like to learn.
That learning is also a regular topic of attack. It seems that some
Amateurs who in the words of a wise-man - "who's only achievement in life
was to pass their Amateur License" use my continued status as holder of a
Foundation License as evidence that I'm clearly not able to pass my exam
and ridicule my excuse of a License to claim that I want to talk to the
world using 5 Watts before changing license. I've said it before and I'll
say it again. This is your hobby. If you gain pleasure from getting a
higher level of responsibility, then by all means do so. If you need
something that your current license doesn't have, go for it. For me, my
license does exactly what I want today, nothing more, nothing less. I have
enough privileges to achieve what I want from this hobby today and my lowly
license did not prevent me from spending...
This posting includes a media file:
http://podcasts.itmaze.com.au/founda...teur-radio.mp3



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