Ivor Jones wrote:
"Grümwîtch thë Ünflãppåblê"
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"Paul W. Schleck" wrote in
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"Whatever Happened to the Electronics Hobbyist?"

Part (not all) of the allure of kits and homebrewing was
"I can build it cheaper than buying". The price of labor
has gone down as a percentage of manufacturing costs, so
purchased-ready-built has gone down over the years.
73, BGO

I've never been a great constructor, due in part to the fact that I've
never lived anywhere with sufficient space to have a decent workbench.

However, the one item I did build of which I am still intensely proud was
a terminal unit for a good old mechanical teleprinter to use on RTTY, back
in the days before computers ruined it ;-)


I believe that there are still significant numbers of builders out
there. I'm one of them, and I know quite a few others.

Paul's link to the story that speaks to the issue is a very good read,
even if I'm not in total agreement, simply because as a person who is
hooked on creating things, I always wondered why more people weren't
into the activity.

There probably will never be a lot of us though, and as our buying
patterns shift to the internet instead of local parts stores, we become
a bit more obscure.

There's nothing like assembling and operating on a piece of equipment
that you build yourself. If you did the actual design, it's an even
bigger treat - taking nothing away from building from a kit though. It's
all good.

Just in the last couple years, I've built:

VHF/UHF J-Pole antenna
1/4 wave VHF Ground plane
2 OCF Dipoles
General purpose dipoles and band specific dipoles.
40-15 meter magloop antenna
UHF yagis (in progress)
Parabolic GHz antenna (in progress)
Digital interface boxes for soundcard modes and computer control of rigs.
Radio direction finders.(in progress)
custom mic/headsets
Shack interfaces

Transceivers have indeed become pretty complex, and are now a niche
market for builders - but they are still out there.

- 73 de Mike KB3EIA -