RadioBanter - Is the code requirement really keeping good people out of ham radio?

RadioBanter (https://www.radiobanter.com/)

- Policy (https://www.radiobanter.com/policy/)

- - Is the code requirement really keeping good people out of ham radio? (https://www.radiobanter.com/policy/104052-code-requirement-really-keeping-good-people-out-ham-radio.html)

Ping Blow Code the pretend ham

Part B, Is the code requirement really keeping good people out?

wrote:
From: on Sat, Oct 7 2006 6:39 am

Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
From: on Tues, Oct 3 2006 3:25 pm
wrote:

Tsk, tsk, you've TOLD ME what I should have done in the
military...

What did Jim TELL YOU that you should have been doing, Len?
Was it something about not fabrication experience in combat?

....yet you've never served in the military or in
the US government. I served 8 years in the US Army.

At ease, old soldier. I served in the military and the U.S. government.
Look what fabrications you've come up with on that.

You can see and read what I did for three years there via:

http://sujan.hallikainen.org/Broadca...s/My3Years.pdf

6 MB in size, takes about 19 minutes download on a dial-up
connection. Twenty pages with many photo illustrations.
High-power HF transmitters. 1953 to 1956.

Reruns of "Look what I did".

The other reason for Len's antics is so he can tell us, once again, the
different things he's done.

"It ain't braggin' if ya done it!" :-)

It isn't "all that", Leonard Baby.

Have you noticed that Len doesn't ask about what other people have done
in *amateur* radio? And this is an *amateur* radio newsgroup!

Tsk, I have done so. All that you've displayed (via links)
is an old 70's era receiver, supposedly built for less than
$100, on Kees Talen's website "HBR" pages (HomeBrew Receiver,
after the various "HBR" articles in QST of decades ago).

(Insert the profile of Leonard's actions here)

Didja know Fessenden's 1906 "broadcast" used an alternator transmitter?
I surely did.
Of course that limited his voice-radio operations to below 100 kHz
(3000 meters)

Tsk, tsk, that was before 1920. 1920 is 86 years ago.

Your ADA sojourn began about fifty-three years back, didn't it, Len?
Why do you live in the past so much?

Why do you live in the past so much?

For a double-degreed education in things electrical you
just displayed a surprising amount of ILL logic and
definite misunderstanding of the real definition of
"practical."
Note the dig at my BSEE and MSEE degrees. What Len doesn't realize is
that, in the history of electrical engineering, all sorts of
now-incredible things were once considered practical.

Some insist that "Greenlee Chassis Punches" are necessary
for homebuilt radio construction.

Who has insisted that, Len. Feel free to use a drill and a saber saw
with a metal-cutting blade.

Is ONLY "practical" for knocking out conduit attachment
holes in electrical power distribution boxes or some
70s-era boatanchor construction project (i.e., using
vacuum tubes and needing socket holes for same).

That's a factual error as anyone who builds linear amplifiers, builds
other electronic gear or installs a ball mount for an antenna on an
automobile can tell you.

Greenlee is still a corporation in Rockford, IL, but they
seem to have stopped making "chassis punches" for radio
hobbyists.

There's another of your factual errors. Greenlee still sells chassis
punches--round ones, square ones, those shaped for D-connectors, power
sockets. There's even a hydraulic punch set. The U.S. Government buys
loads of them. The company's "hole making" product information can be
downloaded--all 7.9 mb of it.

http://www.greenlee.com/product/index.html

For example, the very first operational general-purpose electronic
digital computer was the ENIAC, which was built at one of my alma
maters here in Philadelphia. Its design and construction were paid for
(some would say "subsidized") by the U.S. Army (some would say "the
taxpayers"). Its original stated purpose was for the calculation of
artillery aiming information.

"Firing Tables" those are called, Jimmie. Ever spot
artillery fall, Jimmie? Oh, you weren't IN the
military! That's right...

As I recall, you wrote a very well known piece about what it is like to
undergo an artillery barrage. When and where did that take place, Len?
Can your friend Gene confirm it?

Some may point to machines like the Colossus, Mark 1 or even the ABC as
the "first computer". But they all lack something that ENIAC had. Some,
like the ABC and even Babbage's Difference Engine, were never fully
operational. Some, like the Mark 1, used relays and mechanics for
calculation, and were not really electronic. Some were built for a
specific task, such as breaking codes, and were not really general
purpose. Some were partly or entirely analog, such as the Differential
Analyzer. ENIAC was the first to do it all.

ENIAC "broke codes?" Really? "Did it all?" :-)

Ever hear of 'the BSTJ?' That's the Bell System Technical
Journal. Before the Bell break-up it was published
(mostly) monthly. They had a nice write-up in it on the
three electromechanical 'computers' that Bell Labs made
for making Firing Tables during WWII.

Good old "amateur radio subject in an amateur radio
newsgroup!" :-)

Didn't you just bring up your experiences at ADA?

ENIAC took up an enormous amount of space and power, used over 17,000
tubes and required programming in machine language to do anything
useful.

Jimmie ever do any "programming in machine language?" At any
time? I have. Want me to list them? :-)

That's not necessary, Len. Why not tell us any of the things you've
done in amateur radio?

That's why I wrote the above ENIAC story.

BFD. You went to Moore, "touched" the museum piece that it is.

(insert the profile here)

How many computers made today have a useful life as long as ENIAC?

My HP Pavilion box for one. My wife's HP Pavilion for two.
One hellishly FASTER clock rate than ENIAC, enormous RAM,
ROM, and mass storage medium. Built about 4 years ago.

Let us know if you replace it before eleven years.

I got to see and touch parts of ENIAC.

Wowee. I've touched the Liberty Bell at Independance Hall
in Philly. Between the two, I'd much prefer the Liberty
Bell. ENIAC is defunct. Liberty is NOT.

Liberty is not a bell.

Also read the papers on it. A
machine that changed the world, made from very ordinary parts and
techniques, assembled in a new way.

PR minutae you spout.

Hey! You were finally able to work in the plural form of the word.

Webster's spells it "minutia" for singular, "minutiae" for plural.
Len's should have chosen the singular. He made an error.
Typical.

Tsk, tsk, Jimmie lays on the MINUTAE in plural form so much
that I was correct. :-)

No, Len, you were not correct. You were corrected.

WTF Moore School and ENIAC have to do with AMATEUR RADIO POLICY
seems to have vanished in Jimmieworld.

What was that url for the info about ADA?

The main point is that it's not superfluous. Voice radio was
"practical" enough for MW broadcasting by 1920 - that's not an opinion,
it's a demonstrated fact.
Yes. There is nothing currently underway to move toward anything in the
near future to change amplitude modulation for medium wave broadcasting.
There are AM BC receivers from the 1920s that, if restored, will
perform admirably today in their intended purpose.

Then let the Navy use them. :-) ["perform admirably" :-) ]

Some NTSC TV sets from 60 years ago, if restored, can still be used to
watch VHF TV.

Why? Aren't those good for 80m "CW" transceiver parts?
[rock-bound at 3.58 MHz... :-) ]

"Cost less than $100...etc., etc., etc." :-)

Of course HDTV will eventually replace NTSC.

"Eventually?!?" The transition phase is and has been underway
NOW, Jimmie. Here in the USA, not on some "website."

Only a fraction of the American people are watching HDTV. Most aren't
even aware of what will hit them in a couple of years. People are still
running out to K-Mart and Wally World and buying new *analog* TV sets.
Some compromise sets are being marketed as EDTV for "Enhanced Definition".

Once you watch DTV in operation, side by side with an older
NTSC set, the tremendous difference in DTV can be seen AND
heard. With the truly flat-screen LCD, Plasma, or DLP display
with a wider picture than possible with NTSC, the detail and
expanse is striking with DTV.

It'll be possible to watch DTV with a simple converter. Those will
extend the life of analog televisions for many years. The Feds are even
going to help pay for the converter boxes. I don't recall them doing
that when the UHF-TV channels came into existence.

There'll be a big learning curve for the non-city dwelling owners of new
HDTV receivers. They'll find that they have to use antennas with fairly
high gain, preamps and rotators. They'll be using those rotators quite
often. I ended up buying a Channel Master rotator with remote control
and memory.

Jimmie say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it?" Tsk, Jimmie be
the Amish of ham radio. Jimmie love horse-and-buggy comms
using morse code? [note similarity of 'horse' and 'morse']

(insert profile here)

He knows very little about me and has resorted to wild speculation and
untruths for a long time.

Tsk. Typical bluffmanship on Jimmie's part.

It was an accurate statement, Leonard. You don't know much about Jim.
You have resorted to wild speculation and untruths.

He no say what
he do but he IMPLIES lots.

Sounds like a conspiracy to me.

Sounds like that USMC Imposter
Robeson's tactic.

Why not bring his name up with your new recruiter friend. As an
alternative, have Brian Burke contact "Stolen Valor".

Jimmie keep things SECRET. Very hush-hush. Somebody say
Jimmie know nothing, they "LIARS." Just like Robeson.

You do washee?

See above about ENIAC. It was very practical, in its time - but never
repeated.

ENIAC defuct.

The same can't be said for you.

Flunked in reliability, flunked in architecture
(BCD accumulators/registers, not binary). NEVER repeated.
A MUSEUM PIECE.

As are you, dear Leonard.

I'm still looking for a definition of "morsemanship"

Poor baby. Can't understand it? Post-graduate degree and
you still can't connect the dots? :-)

He has a license which says he can connect the dots and the dashes.
Do you have such documentation? Tsk, tsk, poor baby.

My history sources go far beyond ARRL publications.
And ARRL history isn't "bowdlerized".

ARRL carefully OMITS certain items of history and IMPLIES
amateurs are 'responsible' for all advances. :-)

You've made another untruthful statement. Note the lack of a smiley.

Beyond the Thomas White radio history pages, Jimmie not
mention any of his "sources" that go beyond League
publications.

You're an old cut and paste man, Len. What do you normally do in such a
situation?

I was writing about non-amateur use of Morse Code in radio.

Why Jimmie do dat? This be AMATEUR Radio newsgroup.

What's that ADA url?

Notice how Len doesn't mention any HF experience of his after ADA,
except cb?

WRONG. Civil avionics work included HF...used in US
Aviation Radio Service. Maritime Radio Service
includes personal use of an HF SSB transceiver
(SGC-2020) two years ago. Contract work involved
DoD design and evaluation which did not need my
civilian Commercial operator license sign-off.

All fine stuff, Len. I'm convinced.

To do so would require not only a license, but assembling a station.

"Plug and play" nowadays, was that way a half century
ago. :-)

Sure it is, Len. Just unbox your tower and antennas (all
pre-assembled), set them up in the yard, connect a microphone and "Hello
World". Right.

Collins Radio used to make whole stations,
quit the amateur radio market and still makes money.

Don't they make whole stations anymore?

Note that while Len talks endlessly about places he has worked and
projects he has worked on, there's almost nothing about radio projects
he has done himself, with his own money, at home.

This newsgroup is Amateur Radio Policy, not Amateur Radio
Homebrew. :-)

It isn't alt.radio.commercial or alt.radio.military either, old boy. :-)

Jimmie wanna see my home workshop? Have it digitized,
was sent to three others. Wanna see the HP 608D and
the 606 signal generators, the 60 MHz dual-channel
scopes (note plural), the 1 KW Variac below the bench?

You're kind of light in the Variac department, Len. Don't you have
anything which will handle real power?

Poor baby. Jimmie jealous? Jimmie work at just ONE
employer his whole life? Jimmie NOT serve in military.
Jimmie NOT serve in government. Jimmie "serves" the
nation by his ham radio hobby?

You're a pathetic and childish geezer, Len. You really need a way to
fill your idle hours.

There's the one-tube unlicensed oscillator transmitter of 1948, his
conversion of some ARC-5s and their sale, the store-bought ICOM
receiver and the compact Johnson....and not much else.

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.

Two complete ARC-5 receiver-transmitters for 40 meters.
Conversion earned me some money on resale. I still have
one 6-9 MHz ARC-5 receiver that runs, assorted parts from
both receivers and transmitters. Did that in 1948,
not the "phonograph transmitter" built as a lark in
1947...which worked on the AM BC band and did not violate
any FCC regulations at the time. :-)

Maybe you could whip together a modern, solid state version of the phono
oscillator and play at being a junior ham, Len. You could CQ, assign
yourself an "XB-523" call and all. You might convince a neighbor to
build one too. You could have a blast.

Oh, my, a "store-bought Icom receiver!" Their model IC-R70.
Paid for "in cash" (check, actually) at an HRO in Van Nuys,
CA (later moved to two successive locations in Burbank, CA).
Cost about $600 then. No problem, could afford it.
Ask USMC Imposter Robeson about any of those HRO stores.
He says he's been to two of them "with friends." :-)

Surely he's fabricating. You could check with the recruiter and get
some sort of investigation going right away.

Would you like my old checkbook balance digitized so you
can view it for your 'verification?' How about I digitize
the receipt? Or do you want to wait for the famous
Background Check that Paul seems to want done? :-)

Paul didn't say anything about a background check, Len. He addressed
the IEEE Code of Ethics.

Oh, yeah, the "compact Johnson." The E. F. Johnson
Viking Messenger is small but not necessarily compact.
If you need some verification I can get some URLs for
CB nostalgia types for you.

It is a very tiny Johnson, Len. Your has been gathering dust for years.

On the "compact johnson,"
your allusion to my penis, let's just say I've
satisfied two wives and a dozen girlfriends with my
"goodie woody."

*Guffaw!* I'm sure that the story and equipment used with grow with the
countless retellings, Leonard.

Would you be satisfied with my primary
physician's note on its size, digitized and sent to
you?

I would personally treasure such a document for the rest of my life,
Leonard. It would confirm every notion I've ever had about your state
of being, both physical and emotional.

Or will you wait for Paul's Background Check to
verify that bit of AMATEUR RADIO POLICY you want to
talk about? Hmmm? You like penises, Jimmie?

It sounds as if you're discussing superfluous minutae, Len.

Plus if FCC *does* drop Element 1, what will Len do?

Then I will drop the advocacy of eliminating the morse
code test...as I have written many times in here. There
would be no NEED for advocacy of eliminating that test
since it had already been eliminated in that case.

That isn't the same as saying that you'd be finished with advocating.
Your statement addresses one very specific item.

Tsk, you are SO unbelieving, all that FABRICATION about
"reasons" you imagine! Poor baby.

We've seen you in action for better than a decade. Tsk, task, poor baby.

Len could have had a no-code tech ages ago.

Len had a Commercial First 'Phone since 1956, has used
that in many more places on the EM spectrum than are
allowed to US radio amateurs.

A commercial license can't be used in amateur radio, Len. Sorry.

Mostly for money but
some times just for fun.

Are you discussing your tiny, dusty Johnson?

See you on the air, Dave.

Using very slow-scan ATV? Perhaps using morse code
pixels? You have morse code glasses? Your Elecraft
kit have a built-in spectrum analyzer? Video viewer?

How about if we use any band or mode available to us? You, of course,
may do as you can.

Part B, Is the code requirement really keeping good people out?

wrote:
From: on Sat, Oct 7 2006 6:39 am
Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
From: on Tues, Oct 3 2006 3:25 pm
wrote:
From: Nada Tapu on Sat, Sep 30 2006 2:23 pm
On Fri, 29 Sep 2006 20:56:08 -0400, wrote:

Manual radiotelegraphy was a MUST to use early radio
as a communications medium. The technology of early
radio was primitive, simple, and not yet developed.
On-off keying was the ONLY practical way to make it
possible to communicate.

Yet some pioneers (like Reginald Fessenden) were using voice
communication as early as 1900, and had practical long-distance
radiotelephony by 1906.

"PRACTICAL?!?"

Yes.

What is "PRACTICAL" about inserting a
single carbon microphone in series with the antenna
lead-in to 'brute force' modulate a CW carrier?!?

It was not only PRACTICAL, Len, it was the ONLY way known at the time.
I don't think they used "the antenna lead-in", old boy. They probably
used the feedline. Think of it as more of a "lead-out". You should get
the lead out.

The modulation was done in the ground lead, not the aerial lead. (They
used the term "aerial" in those days).

It was practical enough to be heard across the pond.

That sounds pretty practical.

For its time. Then triode vacuum tubes came along and changed things.

The first triode vacuum tube (deForrest called them "audions"
in those days) was invented in 1906...same year as Reggie's
"Christmas" broadcast. :-)

DeForest spelled his name with only one "r".

Vacuum tubes that could be used in 'practical' transmitters were not
available in 1906. Nor an oscillator circuit. Those things took a few
years to develop.

At NO TIME did any OTHER broadcaster or voice transmitter
adopt the Fessenden brute-force amplitude modulator. NO ONE.
Not in the USA, not in Canada, not anywhere in the world.

How do you know for sure, Len? Did you visit every transmitting station
in the world?

The truth is that you don't know - you're just making things up. Maybe
others adopted Fessenden's idea and failed. Or maybe they succeeded,
but after a time lost interest and went on with other things.

You don't know for sure. All you know is that you haven't come across
any documentation that someone else adopted Fessenden's idea.

So much for your redefinition of "practical."

You seem to think that a thing cannot be practical unless it is copied.
That's simply not true.

...and the insistence of "amateur only" subject matter in
this newsgroup. :-)

Who insists on that?

It appears that Len expects me to reply to his "you have never..."
statements by saying what I have done in non-amateur radio. Old trick,
doesn't work.

Tsk, tsk, you've TOLD ME what I should have done in the
military,

When did I write that? You are telling an untruth, Len.

yet you've never served in the military or in
the US government.

How do you know for sure who served and who didn't?

I served 8 years in the US Army.
You can see and read what I did for three years there via:

http://sujan.hallikainen.org/Broadca...s/My3Years.pdf

If I had a dollar for every time you've mentioned your Army experience
on rrap, I'd probably have enough for a brand new Orion II with all the
filters.

6 MB in size, takes about 19 minutes download on a dial-up
connection.

Are you still using dial-up, Len? I'm not.

Why do you live in the past?

Twenty pages with many photo illustrations.
High-power HF transmitters. 1953 to 1956.

How does anyone know for sure that it's all accurate, Len? You didn't
even get the distance from the USSR to Tokyo correct - maybe you made
other mistakes?

The other reason for Len's antics is so he can tell us, once again, the
different things he's done.

"It ain't braggin' if ya done it!" :-)

How do we know for sure that you did it?

Have you noticed that Len doesn't ask about what other people have done
in *amateur* radio? And this is an *amateur* radio newsgroup!

Tsk, I have done so.

No, you haven't.

All that you've displayed (via links)
is an old 70's era receiver, supposedly built for less than
$100, on Kees Talen's website "HBR" pages (HomeBrew Receiver,
after the various "HBR" articles in QST of decades ago).

Actually it cost about $10.

I've discussed much more of my amateur radio activities here. You
weren't paying attention.

Have you forgotten the picture of my current station on my website? (I
have several - AOL gives them out free. Len hasn't taken advantage of
that AOL feature, even though he has several screen names).

Didja know Fessenden's 1906 "broadcast" used an alternator transmitter?

I surely did.

Of course that limited his voice-radio operations to below 100 kHz
(3000 meters)

Tsk, tsk, that was before 1920. 1920 is 86 years ago.

Why do you live in the past so much?

1956 was 50 years ago. Why do *you* live in the past?

For a double-degreed education in things electrical you
just displayed a surprising amount of ILL logic and
definite misunderstanding of the real definition of
"practical."

Note the dig at my BSEE and MSEE degrees. What Len doesn't realize is
that, in the history of electrical engineering, all sorts of
now-incredible things were once considered practical.

Tom Edison thought for sure that Direct Current would be
The Way for widespread electrical power distribution. :-)

Is NOT practical now.

So Edison made a mistake on that. I wasn't talking about him.

In the history of electrical engineering, all sorts of now-incredible
things were once considered practical. That's a fact.

Academics once insisted that "current flow" was opposite
that of electron flow.

Current flow *is* opposite electron flow, Len. It's an engineering
convention.

Was written up in lots of textbooks.

Still is. Current flows from positive to negative. Electrons go the
other way.

Is NOT practical now.

Then why is it still the conventional representation in electrical
engineering?

Some insist that "Greenlee Chassis Punches" are necessary
for homebuilt radio construction.

I don't. btw, the resceiver on the HBR website was built without them.

Is ONLY "practical" for knocking out conduit attachment
holes in electrical power distribution boxes or some
70s-era boatanchor construction project (i.e., using
vacuum tubes and needing socket holes for same).

No, that's not true at all, Len.

For homebrew radio construction, they have a lot of uses:

- Holes for meters and displays
- Holes for connectors, ranging from SO-239 to DB-25
- Holes for chassis-mount components such as large electrolytic
capacitors and flush-mount transformers
- Holes for ventilation

And much more. Of course those holes can be made other ways - Greenlee
punches have never been essential tools. They're just nice to have and
use.

Greenlee is still a corporation in Rockford, IL, but they
seem to have stopped making "chassis punches" for radio
hobbyists.

That's incorrect. They make a wider line of chassis punches than ever
before.

btw, the classic Adel nibbling tool is still in production.

For example, the very first operational general-purpose electronic
digital computer was the ENIAC, which was built at one of my alma
maters here in Philadelphia. Its design and construction were paid for
(some would say "subsidized") by the U.S. Army (some would say "the
taxpayers"). Its original stated purpose was for the calculation of
artillery aiming information.

"Firing Tables" those are called,

That's nice, Len.

Is "artillery aiming information" somehow incorrect?

Some may point to machines like the Colossus, Mark 1 or even the ABC as
the "first computer". But they all lack something that ENIAC had. Some,
like the ABC and even Babbage's Difference Engine, were never fully
operational. Some, like the Mark 1, used relays and mechanics for
calculation, and were not really electronic. Some were built for a
specific task, such as breaking codes, and were not really general
purpose. Some were partly or entirely analog, such as the Differential
Analyzer. ENIAC was the first to do it all.

ENIAC "broke codes?" Really? "Did it all?" :-)

ENIAC had all the features needed to be the very first operational
general-purpose electronic
digital computer. And it was.

Ever hear of 'the BSTJ?' That's the Bell System Technical
Journal. Before the Bell break-up it was published
(mostly) monthly. They had a nice write-up in it on the
three electromechanical 'computers' that Bell Labs made
for making Firing Tables during WWII.

They were slow - at least an order of magnitude slower than ENIAC. They
were not general purpose, either. Their technology led nowhere.

Good old "amateur radio subject in an amateur radio
newsgroup!" :-)

You mean like your constant rehash of ADA?

ENIAC took up an enormous amount of space and power, used over 17,000
tubes and required programming in machine language to do anything
useful.

ever do any "programming in machine language?"

Yes.

At any
time? I have. Want me to list them? :-)

No.

Its complexity and sheer size meant that breakdowns were frequent. One
solution was to never turn it off, because many failures occurred
during turn-on and turn-off.

Good old tube filaments!

They're called heaters, Len.

Part of the problem was that the parts used in the original
construction were not the most reliable possible. ENIAC was built under
wartime restrictions, and they had to use what they could get. The
quality of some parts, particularly common octal tubes, noticeably
decreased over the war years because they were being made by a variety
of companies, using inexperienced people and whatever facilities were
available.

People reproduce without any experience. :-)

Fortunately, some do not.

The experienced tube companies and people were needed for
radar and proximity fuse work, not the manufacture of 6SN7s.

Tsk, in the history of the War Production Board, the
number 1 priority went to the Manhattan Project. Second
priority was the manufacture of quartz crystal units (a
million a month total between '43 and '45). The company
that would change its corporate name to MOTOROLA (Galvin
Manufacturing) was the center of quartz production control
but Galvin also designed and built wartime radios...one
(the first handie-talkie) being done before the USA was
drawn into WW2. Heck, Lewyt Vacuum Cleaner Company built
high-power transmitters (BC-339) during WW2.

What does that have to do with ENIAC?

The point is that the ENIAC folks got the machine to work with the
parts available.

The reliability of ENIAC was such that it would typically run for 1 to
2 days before something needed fixing. Its record was only about 5 days
of continuous operation. The folks using it got very very good at
identifying and fixing the problems.

ENIAC was never duplicated. During its development, so much was learned
that newer machines like EDSAC, EDVAC and ultimately the UNIVAC were
designed, rather than repeat the ENIAC design.

ENIAC flunked.

No, it passed.

The Army accepted ENIAC, moved it to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, and
used it until 1955.
If it were not a 'practical' device, they would have simply abandoned
it or scrapped it.

The US Army abandoned and/or scrapped a lot of things in those days.
For example, a lot of material was destroyed or abandoned in place
because it wasn't practical to bring it back to the USA. Projects were
simply stopped. WW2 "surplus" was sold for pennies on the dollar just
to get rid of it.

If ENIAC "flunked", why did the Army use it for at least 9 years?

It went defunct.

After 1955, yes.

One of a kind.

ENIAC was never duplicated. During its development, so much was learned
that newer machines like EDSAC, EDVAC and ultimately the UNIVAC were
designed, rather than repeat the ENIAC design.

By modern standards, or even those of 20, 30, or 40 years ago, ENIAC
is/was totally impractical.

Try 51 years, not just 40 years ago.

51 years was 1955. ENIAC served the Army for at least 9 years (1946 to
1955). Say, that's longer than *you* claim to have served, Len! ;-)
;-) ;-)

But by the standards of its time, it was a tremendous advance.

According to Moore School PR and the Eckert-Mauchley company
that also went defunct afterwards... :-)

Bought out by a larger company.

ENIAC *was* a tremendous advance. And it was practical, by the
standards of its time.

Calculations that took *weeks* using pre-ENIAC methods could be done in
*seconds* using the machine.

Now, now, you are comparing pomegranites and pumpkins.

Nope. I'm comparing calculating speeds.

Quit

You're telling me what to do, Len. You frequently tell people what to
do, when they prove you wrong. What is wrong with live and let live?

trying to compare humans operating Monroe or Friden desk
calculators for those Firing Table data tabulations with
the MINUTES it took using ENIAC.

Why? Did you ever see a firing table calculation (not tabulation) done
on ENIAC? Or do one by hand? Ever see the machine itself? Ever read the
original papers on it?

The boundaries of "numerically hard"
calculation were pushed back enormously.

Tsk. It's a given that mechanical means, then electrical
means has been acknowledged as making mathematical
calculations faster since LONG before ENIAC existed.

Irrelevant. The point is that the use of electronics by ENIAC increased
the speed by *orders* of magnitude. No mechanical or electromechanical
machine could hope to keep up.

Mechanical and electromechanical computing and calculating were
rendered hopelessly obsolete by ENIAC's success. ENIAC caused the focus
to move to purely electronic computing and calculating. Within a few
years, commercial machines like UNIVAC were on the market. (A UNIVAC
correctly predicted the outcome of the 1952 presidential election,
based on just a few percent of the returns).

Most important of all, the ENIAC was considered "practical" enough by
the US Army. Soon after it was publically announced in 1946, the Army
moved it to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, where it was used
for its intended purposes until 1955.

The government PAID for it and now they were stuck with this
big white elephant.

Yes, the Army paid for it.

No, it wasn't a "white elephant". It was practical and they used it.

The Army accepted ENIAC, moved it to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, and
used it until 1955.
If it were not a 'practical' device, they would have simply abandoned
it or scrapped it.

The US Army abandoned and/or scrapped a lot of things in those days.
For example, a lot of material was destroyed or abandoned in place
because it wasn't practical to bring it back to the USA. Projects were
simply stopped. WW2 "surplus" was sold for pennies on the dollar just
to get rid of it.

If ENIAC was a "white elephant". why did the Army use it for at least 9
years?

Probably didn't bother declaring it
"surplus" since no one wanted to buy it. :-)

They couldn't decalre it surplus because they were using it.

That's why I wrote the above ENIAC story.

BFD. You went to Moore, "touched" the museum piece that it is.

It's clear you're very jealous, Len.

How many computers made today have a useful life as long as ENIAC?

My HP Pavilion box for one. My wife's HP Pavilion for two.
One hellishly FASTER clock rate than ENIAC, enormous RAM,
ROM, and mass storage medium. Built about 4 years ago.

ENIAC was in service at least 9 years, Len.

My Apple ][ Plus for three...built in 1980 sold to me in
1980...been running now and then ever since.

You never turn it off?

Dinky little
clock rate of 1 MHz, a thousand times slower than the HP
Pavilions but still a lot faster than ENIAC could ever do.
A quarter of a century later it still boots up, runs
programs.

But it's not practical any more.

Those machines can all trace their design right back to ENIAC - and not
to any mechanical or electromechanical device.

btw, in 1976, ENIAC was returned to where it was built, and a museum
display set up with parts of it. In the 1990s, part of it was restored
to operating condition, and some calculations done as a demonstration.

[big Ben Stein "wowwwww..." here]

Thirty years before 1976 the Rosenwald Museum of Science and
Industry in Chicago had a working interactive tic-tac-toe
calculator made from relays. Was mounted behind glass so the
visitors could see the relays in operation. Interactive,
Jimmie, any visitor could try it without instruction. :-)

Not general purpose, and not a computer.

I got to see and touch parts of ENIAC.

Wowee. I've touched the Liberty Bell at Independance Hall
in Philly.

So did I - several times.

When I ran the Philadelphia Independence Marathon, the finish line was
in front of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.

Between the two, I'd much prefer the Liberty
Bell.

Why must one prefer one over the other?

ENIAC is defunct. Liberty is NOT.

"Liberty is not a bell". And the way things are going, Liberty is
slowly being eroded.

btw, the Liberty Bell *is* defunct for its original purpose (ringing).

Also read the papers on it. A
machine that changed the world, made from very ordinary parts and
techniques, assembled in a new way.

PR minutae you spout.

The word is spelled "minutiae", Len.

Maybe you ought to get on a committee
to build a SHRINE for ENIAC?

There's already a museum. No shrine needed.

"All worship the Machine That
CHANGED THE WORLD!!!" :-)

You really are jealous, aren't you, Len? Fact is, ENIAC *did* change
the world.

Webster's spells it "minutia" for singular, "minutiae" for plural.

Len's should have chosen the singular. He made an error.

Typical.

Tsk, tsk,

lays on the MINUTAE in plural form so much
that I was correct. :-)

"Minutiae" is the plural, Len.

WTF Moore School and ENIAC have to do with AMATEUR RADIO POLICY
seems to have vanished

I'll explain it again, Len:

In the history of electrical engineering, all sorts of now-incredible
things were once considered practical. That's a fact.

ENIAC is just one example of how things that are now considered
incredible were once practical.

The main point is that it's not superfluous. Voice radio was
"practical" enough for MW broadcasting by 1920 - that's not an opinion,
it's a demonstrated fact.

Yes. There is nothing currently underway to move toward anything in the
near future to change amplitude modulation for medium wave broadcasting.

There are AM BC receivers from the 1920s that, if restored, will
perform admirably today in their intended purpose.

Then let the Navy use them. :-) ["perform admirably" :-) ]

??

Some NTSC TV sets from 60 years ago, if restored, can still be used to
watch VHF TV.

Why? Aren't those good for 80m "CW" transceiver parts?
[rock-bound at 3.58 MHz... :-) ]

"Cost less than $100...etc., etc., etc." :-)

Of course HDTV will eventually replace NTSC.

"Eventually?!?"

Yes, eventually. How many times have they moved the date when NTSC TV
will end? How many NTSC TV sets and other hardware are being sold
today?

Once you watch DTV in operation, side by side with an older
NTSC set, the tremendous difference in DTV can be seen AND
heard. With the truly flat-screen LCD, Plasma, or DLP display
with a wider picture than possible with NTSC, the detail and
expanse is striking with DTV.

Yes - but most of the shows are still JUNK. The quality of the picture
and sound doesn't make up for the lack of quality in the programming.

say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it?"

What's wrong with that?

be the Amish of ham radio.

Do you have a problem with "the Amish"? Do you know anything about them
or their way of life?

Do you know what happened in Nickel Mines, PA last week?

He knows very little about me and has resorted to wild speculation and
untruths for a long time.

Sounds like that USMC Imposter
Robeson's tactic.

How do you know if someone is a "USMC Imposter", Len?

See above about ENIAC. It was very practical, in its time - but never
repeated.

ENIAC defuct.

"defuct"?

Flunked in reliability, flunked in architecture
(BCD accumulators/registers, not binary). NEVER repeated.
A MUSEUM PIECE.

If it were so bad, why did the Army use it for at least 9 years?

ENIAC served the Army longer than *you* did, Len ;-)

I'm still looking for a definition of "morsemanship"

Poor baby. Can't understand it? Post-graduate degree and
you still can't connect the dots? :-)

It's not in the dictionary.

My history sources go far beyond ARRL publications.
And ARRL history isn't "bowdlerized".

ARRL carefully OMITS certain items of history and IMPLIES
amateurs are 'responsible' for all advances. :-)

More untruths from Len.

Notice how Len doesn't mention any HF experience of his after ADA,
except cb?

WRONG. Civil avionics work included HF...used in US
Aviation Radio Service.

OK

Maritime Radio Service
includes personal use of an HF SSB transceiver
(SGC-2020) two years ago.
Contract work involved
DoD design and evaluation which did not need my
civilian Commercial operator license sign-off.

Somebody else's radio on somebody else's boat, authorized under
somebody else's license.

To do so would require not only a license, but assembling a station.

"Plug and play" nowadays, was that way a half century
ago. :-)

For cb

Collins Radio used to make whole stations,
quit the amateur radio market and still makes money.

Superfluous

Note that while Len talks endlessly about places he has worked and
projects he has worked on, there's almost nothing about radio projects
he has done himself, with his own money, at home.

This newsgroup is Amateur Radio Policy, not Amateur Radio
Homebrew. :-)

There's the one-tube unlicensed oscillator transmitter of 1948, his
conversion of some ARC-5s and their sale, the store-bought ICOM
receiver and the compact Johnson....and not much else.

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.

Two complete ARC-5 receiver-transmitters for 40 meters.

Already mentioned.

Conversion earned me some money on resale. I still have
one 6-9 MHz ARC-5 receiver that runs, assorted parts from
both receivers and transmitters. Did that in 1948,
not the "phonograph transmitter" built as a lark in
1947...which worked on the AM BC band and did not violate
any FCC regulations at the time. :-)

Already mentioned.

You are confused with the 1947 HF regenerative receiver
that I suppose DID 'regenerate' a bit much out a 200 foot
long wire antenna at times. :-)

Oh, my, a "store-bought Icom receiver!" Their model IC-R70.
Paid for "in cash" (check, actually) at an HRO in Van Nuys,
CA (later moved to two successive locations in Burbank, CA).
Cost about $600 then. No problem, could afford it.

Already mentioned.

Oh, yeah, the "compact Johnson." The E. F. Johnson
Viking Messenger is small but not necessarily compact.

Practical for its time.

If you need some verification I can get some URLs for
CB nostalgia types for you. On the "compact johnson,"

I wrote about your "compact Johnson", Len - and that's all. See the
capital J? That's a proper name.

Plus if FCC *does* drop Element 1, what will Len do?

Then I will drop the advocacy of eliminating the morse
code test...as I have written many times in here.

First time I've seen you wrote that.

Besides, if the test is gone, there's no reason to advocate for its
elimination.

The question is what will you do without that obsession to fill your
time?

There
would be no NEED for advocacy of eliminating that test
since it had already been eliminated in that case.

Well, duh.

Tsk, you are SO unbelieving, all that FABRICATION about
"reasons" you imagine! Poor baby.

You have advocated far more than simple elimination of the Morse Code
test.

Part B, Is the code requirement really keeping good people out?

N2EFrom: on Sun, Oct 8 2006 5:29 am

wrote:
From: on Sat, Oct 7 2006 6:39 am
Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
From: on Tues, Oct 3 2006 3:25 pm
wrote:
From: Nada Tapu on Sat, Sep 30 2006 2:23 pm
On Fri, 29 Sep 2006 20:56:08 -0400, wrote:

At NO TIME did any OTHER broadcaster or voice transmitter
adopt the Fessenden brute-force amplitude modulator. NO ONE.
Not in the USA, not in Canada, not anywhere in the world.

How do you know for sure, Len? Did you visit every transmitting station
in the world?

No. There is NO historical record of ANY broadcasting
station USING that single-high-power-special-carbon-
microphone "modulator" that you claim is "practical."

The truth is that you don't know - you're just making things up. Maybe
others adopted Fessenden's idea and failed. Or maybe they succeeded,
but after a time lost interest and went on with other things.

The "truth" is that you are ****ed, want to rationalize
your previous claim of "practicality" and are trying to
side-pedal onto some area where you can rail at the
challengers, saying the challengers LIE.

You don't know for sure. All you know is that you haven't come across
any documentation that someone else adopted Fessenden's idea.

All I know is that NO ONE seems to have documented it...
and there has been LOTS of documentation about broad-
casting for all of its existance...from manufacturers
to users.

Feel free to post ANY source that claims to have used
Reggie's brute-force modulator of a single-high-power-
special-carbon-microphone "modulator" that you say is
"practical."

Why don't you write some of the 50 KW AM broadcasters
and suggest this "practical" idea? Try KMPC here in San
Fernando Valley. 50 KW RF output into three towers.
Do you know of any carbon microphone maker that sells a
FIFTY KILOWATT MICROPHONE? Can you engineer one?

How about the studio people at KMPC? Would you like to
tell them that, for "practical" reasons, they all have to
cluster around a SINGLE microphone that is passing 50 KW
of RF energy? Hmmm? The studio MUST be moved to the
transmitter site unless you can figure out some way for
the SINGLE microphone to exist in present studios yet
handle the 50 KW RF from the transmitter and back out to
the antenna.

So much for your redefinition of "practical."

You seem to think that a thing cannot be practical unless it is copied.
That's simply not true.

I think (no "seem" about it) that you dribbled out some
nonsense about your radio hero's "practical" thing and
are trying (vainly) to get the hell out of it through
a lot of NON-thinking.

yet you've never served in the military or in
the US government.

How do you know for sure who served and who didn't?

YOU did NOT serve in ANY military. Period. You don't
have the attitude for anything but being elitist, you-
are-better-superiority.

If I had a dollar for every time you've mentioned your Army experience
on rrap, I'd probably have enough for a brand new Orion II with all the
filters.

NOT enough. Not enough to cover the costs of your HBR
clone pictured on Kees Talen's website.

Twenty pages with many photo illustrations.
High-power HF transmitters. 1953 to 1956.

How does anyone know for sure that it's all accurate, Len? You didn't
even get the distance from the USSR to Tokyo correct - maybe you made
other mistakes?

It was already reviewed by three who were THERE, plus
a civilian engineer who worked there for both the USA
and USAF. Several others who were THERE, including a
USAF MSgt who worked at Kashiwa after the USAF took it
over have looked at the final copy FIRST. A draft
copy went with the CD containing photos about Hardy
Barracks to a Pacific Stars and Stripes journalist in
Tokyo. That journalist supplied some extra data which
was incorporated into the final version.

I was in the Army at the time, NOT the USAF. Didn't
need to compute any air distances of possible enemy
aircraft directions. Are you going to say there was
"no danger" from the USSR in the early 1950s?!? Go
tell that to the Far East Command folks...now the
USARPAC based at Fort Shafter, HI.

Speaking of "distances," want to give the distance
to the moon again like you did the first time? :-)

"It ain't braggin' if ya done it!" :-)

How do we know for sure that you did it?

You don't...because you NEVER CHECK. All you do is
say I am "in error" (LIE). I have the third-party
documentation, was there.

You were never there. You never served in any
military.

Have you noticed that Len doesn't ask about what other people have done
in *amateur* radio? And this is an *amateur* radio newsgroup!

Tsk, I have done so.

No, you haven't.

Oh, so now YOU just said what you claimed you didn't say
earlier in your post! [can you say 'hypocrite?']

All that you've displayed (via links)
is an old 70's era receiver, supposedly built for less than
$100, on Kees Talen's website "HBR" pages (HomeBrew Receiver,
after the various "HBR" articles in QST of decades ago).

Actually it cost about $10.

Ten dollars is LESS THAN $100.

If it only cost "$10" then I've only mentioned a large
HF communications station ten times... :-)

You have to get your money for that Orion somewhere else.

You can't design an Orion clone by yourself? :-)

In the history of electrical engineering, all sorts of now-incredible
things were once considered practical. That's a fact.

Yawn.

Current flow *is* opposite electron flow, Len. It's an engineering
convention.

The engineering convention I go to is called 'WESCON'
the WEStern electronics show and CONvention. Alternates
years between Anaheim, CA, and San Francisco, CA. One-
week combination trade show and technical talks.

Still is. Current flows from positive to negative. Electrons go the
other way.

Is NOT practical now.

Then why is it still the conventional representation in electrical
engineering?

Is it? :-) Have you cracked a NEW text published after
two decades ago? :-)

Are you going to explain "current flow" from the faceplate
of a CRT back to the cathode? :-)

ENIAC "broke codes?" Really? "Did it all?" :-)

ENIAC had all the features needed to be the very first operational
general-purpose electronic digital computer. And it was.

ENIAC broke codes?

Don't waffle. Either it did or it didn't.

Ever hear of 'the BSTJ?' That's the Bell System Technical
Journal. Before the Bell break-up it was published
(mostly) monthly. They had a nice write-up in it on the
three electromechanical 'computers' that Bell Labs made
for making Firing Tables during WWII.

They were slow - at least an order of magnitude slower than ENIAC. They
were not general purpose, either. Their technology led nowhere.

Tell that to Bell Labs. :-) Tell that to Claude
Elwood Shannon. :-)

ever do any "programming in machine language?"

Yes.

Which processor or CPU?

Good old tube filaments!

They're called heaters, Len.

Tsk. Out came the knuckle-spanking ruler again! :-)

I have lots of old engineering texts which refer to
the glowing part of vacuum tubes as 'filaments.'

More than I have old engineering texts which talk
about "current flow."

Are you now going to whip out some hydro engineering
texts and explain that "current flow" goes uphill in
a stream? :-)

The point is that the ENIAC folks got the machine to work with the
parts available.

What does ENIAC have to do with amateur radio policy?

The Army accepted ENIAC, moved it to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, and
used it until 1955.
If it were not a 'practical' device, they would have simply abandoned
it or scrapped it.

Tsk, you are an amateur extra pro-coder and KNOW what
the US Army thinks-knows-does!

Marvelous! All from NEVER serving in any military!

Yawn.

Mechanical and electromechanical computing and calculating were
rendered hopelessly obsolete by ENIAC's success. ENIAC caused the focus
to move to purely electronic computing and calculating. Within a few
years, commercial machines like UNIVAC were on the market. (A UNIVAC
correctly predicted the outcome of the 1952 presidential election,
based on just a few percent of the returns).

Predicted all by itself? No programmer did anything?

Amazing!

But, UNIVAC was not ENIAC. :-)

It's clear you're very jealous, Len.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yawn.

Those machines can all trace their design right back to ENIAC - and not
to any mechanical or electromechanical device.

Oh, my, not to Alfred Boole? :-)

Not to Von Neuman? Not to hundreds of thousands
like Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley? Or Jack Kilby?
Or the innovator of the floppy disk mass storage
device (whoever did that first)?

Right you are, Mr. Computer Guru. Nothing about "Harvard"
architecture, "pipelining", bilateral digital switching,
standardized logic levels, RAM, ROM, EPROM, or BINARY
registers instead of the BCD variant ENIAC used. Modern
computers "trace their design right back to ENIAC?"
Nooooooo.

Try as hard as I can, I can't find ANY relatively modern
computer that needs 6SN7s (a dual triode, octal base),
not even 12AU7s. The last vacuum tube used with computers
was the CRT and that's quickly going away...

ENIAC is defunct. Liberty is NOT.

"Liberty is not a bell".

Whatever you say, Mr. Patriot.

I think of LIBERTY and FREEDOM in the larger sense, but
if all you can think of is some 'bell' go for it.

Ring your own chimes, Mr. Never Served.

You really are jealous, aren't you, Len? Fact is, ENIAC *did* change
the world.

Still stuck on that religious object at Moore? Tsk.

How do you know if someone is a "USMC Imposter", Len?

Real veterans KNOW this, Jimmie. You don't because you will
never be a military veteran.

ENIAC served the Army longer than *you* did, Len ;-)

No problem, ENIAC served the ARMY an infinity more
than YOU did. You NEVER served...any military.

BTW, what did it say on ENIAC's DD-214? :-)

Oh, yeah, the "compact Johnson." The E. F. Johnson
Viking Messenger is small but not necessarily compact.

Practical for its time.

Is it like the "ENIAC" of CB?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[damn, it's hard to keep a straight face with your postings]

I wrote about your "compact Johnson", Len - and that's all. See the
capital J? That's a proper name.

It's just a SURNAME, Jimmie, for "E. F. Johnson."

E. F. Johnson made a LOT of different radios. Which one
do you think I have?

Have you seen the E. F. Johnson mobile transceivers they
have now? Much more compact than the Viking Messenger.

Plus if FCC *does* drop Element 1, what will Len do?

Then I will drop the advocacy of eliminating the morse
code test...as I have written many times in here.

First time I've seen you wrote that.

Here's a plain and simple fact: You LIE, Jimmie.

I have explained what I will do many times. So many
times that I might juggle a few words to make it look
a bit different. The INTENT and MEANING is still the
same.

Besides, if the test is gone, there's no reason to advocate for its
elimination.

Golleee, Gomer, you finally figured that out all by
yourself?

BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The question is what will you do without that obsession to fill your
time?

What "obsession?" :-)

Changing federal laws and regulations is a POLITICAL
matter. I am active in politics, many things, but none
are "obsessions." ["obsessions" like the religious
affection for a defunct computer]

You have advocated far more than simple elimination of the Morse Code
test.

How about that? :-)

Elimination of the morse code test was NEVER "simple." :-)

To do so would mean the End of the World As Morsemen
Knew It!

Morse code testing is practically a Religious Rite to all
morsemen, ending it is like defaming God, a Heresy with
a capital H. :-)

But, as always to you, ByteBrothers famous phrase invoked.

Ping Blow Code the pretend ham

Part B, Is the code requirement really keeping good people out?

From: Dave Heil on Sun, Oct 8 2006 4:28 am

wrote:
From: on Sat, Oct 7 2006 6:39 am
Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
From: on Tues, Oct 3 2006 3:25 pm
wrote:

Tsk, tsk, you've TOLD ME what I should have done in the
military...

What did Jim TELL YOU that you should have been doing, Len?

It's in the archives where Jimmie likes to live. :-)

You can see and read what I did for three years there via:

http://sujan.hallikainen.org/Broadca...s/My3Years.pdf

6 MB in size, takes about 19 minutes download on a dial-up
connection. Twenty pages with many photo illustrations.
High-power HF transmitters. 1953 to 1956.

Reruns of "Look what I did".

Not "I," old soldier-statesman, what *we* in the
battalion did. 8235th Army Unit.

It's for historical interest purposes. The only other one
(a much larger one) is at www.usarmygermany.com that was
put together by Walter Elkins about the Signal effort in
Europe.

If you sneer too much at the My3Years.pdf, then feel free
to substitute AlphabetSoup.pdf, a copy of my battalion's
own production of its mission tasks circa 1962. That
courtesy of Mr. James Brendage, a retired civilian
engineer who worked at ADA when I was serving there.

If you don't like either of those, then substitute either
one of the two remaining, one on microwave radio relay,
the other on the SCR-300, both from a technical standpoint.
The SCR-300 was the first walkie-talkie, a backpack VHF
transceiver, introduced during WW2, designed and built by
Galvin Mfg (later to be renamed Motorola).

It's all about RADIO and COMMUNICATIONS.

Your ADA sojourn began about fifty-three years back, didn't it, Len?
Why do you live in the past so much?

1. I live for the now and the future, not the past.

2. There is no copyright restriction on government works,
therefore no need to get written permission.

3. There is no security classification on the material
I've presented...neither from the DoD nor private
company non-disclosure agreements.

Greenlee is still a corporation in Rockford, IL, but they
seem to have stopped making "chassis punches" for radio
hobbyists.

There's another of your factual errors.

My bad. :-) Does Greenlee take out ads in QST, QEX?

How about Popular Communications? Any ads in there?

Greenlee still sells chassis
punches--round ones, square ones, those shaped for D-connectors, power
sockets. There's even a hydraulic punch set. The U.S. Government buys
loads of them. The company's "hole making" product information can be
downloaded--all 7.9 mb of it.

http://www.greenlee.com/product/index.html

Are you on commission from Greenlee? :-)

No sweat, old soldier-statesman, I've been IN Greenlee on
a visit, have seen the little corner of one building where
two guys were making punches and files.

Send your download to Lowes or Home Depot corporate head-
quarters, see if they are interested.

I still have old Greenlee chassis punches from before the
60s, still wrapped in oily paper, get checked now and then
for rust. They were all used decades ago...only two have
been reground on the edges (did that myself, no problem).

Not much use for those punches now in the solid-state era.
Especially when there are so many KITS available for those
who claim to design their own. :-)

Jimmie ever do any "programming in machine language?" At any
time? I have. Want me to list them? :-)

That's not necessary, Len. Why not tell us any of the things you've
done in amateur radio?

You mean the software mods I made for two other hams
don't apply? [Microchip Corp. PIC microcontrollers]

How about a series of bandpass filters for the HF bands
where I did the toroid windings, capacitor selection,
assembly, shielding, and alignment? Using my own
computer program "LCie4"?

Oh, be still my heart, the great soldier-statesman has
put me down! :-)

Only a fraction of the American people are watching HDTV. Most aren't
even aware of what will hit them in a couple of years. People are still
running out to K-Mart and Wally World and buying new *analog* TV sets.

Thank you for the attempt at being an electronics
industry "insider." It is nice to know that someone
cares.

There'll be a big learning curve for the non-city dwelling owners of new
HDTV receivers. They'll find that they have to use antennas with fairly
high gain, preamps and rotators. They'll be using those rotators quite
often. I ended up buying a Channel Master rotator with remote control
and memory.

That's nice. Are you going for some kind of amateur HDTV
award or contest?

He knows very little about me and has resorted to wild speculation and
untruths for a long time.

Tsk. Typical bluffmanship on Jimmie's part.

It was an accurate statement, Leonard. You don't know much about Jim.
You have resorted to wild speculation and untruths.

How can something be "untrue" if there is NO basis to
judge? Id est, as in his never saying...but you MUST
call a speculation a LIE?

Sounds like the old Waffen SS trick again.

ARRL carefully OMITS certain items of history and IMPLIES
amateurs are 'responsible' for all advances. :-)

You've made another untruthful statement.

My apology for offending your religious beliefs. However,
the TRUTH is not heresy.

Jimmie wanna see my home workshop? Have it digitized,
was sent to three others. Wanna see the HP 608D and
the 606 signal generators, the 60 MHz dual-channel
scopes (note plural), the 1 KW Variac below the bench?

You're kind of light in the Variac department, Len. Don't you have
anything which will handle real power?

Yes...it's labeled "4 Stacks" on aeronautical sectional
charts.

BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[pilot joke, old soldier-statesman]

You're a pathetic and childish geezer, Len.

Awwww...you are TOO sweet... :-)

You really need a way to fill your idle hours.

"Idle?"

BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Paul didn't say anything about a background check, Len. He addressed
the IEEE Code of Ethics.

YOU addressed the IEEE Code of Ethics, failing to write
all of it. Paul picked up on that and wanted to get in
some kind of "fight" about it.

YOU have the mailing address of the IEEE. Feel free to
write them and complain about my behavior in the news-
group and how that "violates" the Professional Code of
Ethics about engineering WORK. Be sure and document
everything from BOTH sides, such as your own name-
calling ("You're a pathetic and childish geezer").
Tell the IEEE that your "soldier-statesman" image has
been "tarnished" by "insults" in here. Go ahead, make
your day.

Are you discussing your tiny, dusty Johnson?

No, but you seem to have overmuch interest in it.

Did you munch a lot of nuts while in Guinea-Bisseau?
[cashews are their biggest export...]

As always to you, ByteBrothers famous phrase invoked...

Part B, Is the code requirement really keeping good people out?

From: Dave Heil on Sat, Oct 7 2006 11:52 pm

wrote:
Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
From: on Tues, Oct 3 2006 3:25 pm
wrote:

It appears that Len expects me to reply to his "you have never..."
statements by saying what I have done in non-amateur radio. Old trick,
doesn't work.

It works! :-) Jimmie just hasn't done anything outside.

He has never been IN the military.

He has never been IN government.

He has never stated what he does for a living.

It hasn't stopped him from trying. He has never become a radio amateur
despite his several decades of self-declared "interest" in amateur radio.

How about that? I became a professional BEFORE anything
else! :-)

The other reason for Len's antics is so he can tell us, once again, the
different things he's done.

He should just number them. Instead of typing all of those words over
and over, he could just type something like "62."

What, no "69?" [Cecil and I probably agree on that one...:-) ]

If he tries a "you have never" and someone refutes it with details, Len
simply clams up.

Ah! "Justification" for that Imposter Robeson...a licensed
amateur extra and a pro-coder!

My, my, these pro-coders sure do hang together.

Cosier that way. They would otherwise hang separately. :-)

If they voluntarily post material describing something
they've done, Len uses that as an opportunity for insulting the poster.

I will insult any poster of Che Guevara I see. :-)

Most political posters glued to vertical spaces are
themselves insulting...

...and like ENIAC, Fessendon's feat was an advancement over what had
previously been possible.

"...had previously been possible." :-)

I'm glad we don't need that sort of thing today. I don't have room for
an ENIAC.

Sure you do in that rambling country antenna farm.

But, there's only ONE ENIAC and it is now a museum
piece. Defunct. Good only for show-and-tell.

I wonder if Len ever saw or touched ENIAC.

Why is that "necessary?" :-)

...and a high quality, tube-type BC set from the 1950's sounds every bit
as good as its modern, LSI counterpart.

Enjoy your vacuum tube set...until one of the tubes burns
out. :-)

He knows very little about me and has resorted to wild speculation and
untruths for a long time.

I'm sure you have an idea of his reasons for digging for information.

You WILL reveal to the forum your "reasons," won't you?

Of course you will, you both are pro-code amateur extras,
the 'superior' ones who know everything. :-)

You MUST "profile" all those who don't agree with you.

White's is very good - for what it covers. It essentially stops long
before WW2. Its treatment is heavy on broadcasting, light on amateurs
and nonbroadcasting commercial operation. IMHO.

But Len refers to it as if it is the Bible.

Not at all. Thomas H. White's radio history in the USA is
large, illustrated, and readily accessible on the web. It
was mentioned only because of its accessibility.

McGraw-Hill's ELECTRONICS magazine of April 17, 1980, had a
special commemorative Issue on their 50th anniversary.
Volume 53, Number 9, 650 pages, excellent overview with
many details, photographs from before Marconi's time to
1980. They didn't emphasize amateur radio because amateur
radio was really a small player in that bigger game of
electronics technology. Unless one was a subscriber to
Electronics magazine or has access to a technical library,
it isn't that easy to use as a reference.

Hugh G. J. Aitken's "The Continuous Wave: Technology and
American Radio," 1900-1932, Princeton University Press,
1985, 588 pages, soft cover, is a scholarly work, quite
complete and sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
Again, there isn't the highlighting of amateur radio a la
ARRL but that is for the real reason that amateur radio
wasn't considered a 'big player' in the technological
development of radio.

Aitken's earlier work, "Syntony and Spark: The Origins of
Radio" was done in 1976, reprinted in 1985 by Princeton
University Press. I don't have that handy at the moment
so I can't describe its size but it is another soft-
cover. Neither is readily available except from a
technical library.

What some amateurs call "The Collins Sideband Book," or
"Single Sideband Principles and Circuits," Pappenfus,
Bruene, and Schoenike, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964,
382 pages, has a good bit of HF communications history
in Chapter 1 up to copyright date of the book, more in
following chapters on various early SSB systems.

A veritable cornucopia of radio-electronics historical
information can be found on dozens of websites that don't
inwardly focus just on amateur radio. One can start with
the links listing at http://sujan.hallikainen.org down
towards the bottom of the "Broadcast History" main page.
Harold Hallikainen is a licensed radio amateur, by the
way. From those links can be found much history of
communications and electronics, even military such as
Walter Elkins' www.usarmygermany.com website (huge,
detailed history of post-WW2 US Army history in USAEUR).
If you need to see a direct copy of US Army in the Far
East circa 1962, download my Military (page) upload of
http://sujan.hallikainen.org/BroadcastHistory/uploads/
AlphabetSoup.pdf. For things like the telecommunications
infrastructure there are several sites about this service
that is supposed to "fail" at every emergency (according
to some popular but erroneous myths among some hams)
such as the transcontinental microwave radio relay
system by AT&T that was, developments of microwave
vacuum tubes, slow-scan TV (other than amateur
experiments), cellular telephony, indeed nearly every
facet of "the telephone company." It might be noted
that the microwave radio relay system was an integral
part of US defense communications in the decades
before 1980...which is opposite of the "always fails"
claim of the infrastructure accusers. Some of that
includes the Western Electric Company early work that
helped bring the early vacuum tube into a reproducible,
reliable product.

At the IEEE website under "Milestones" (in electronics
and electrical power distribution) is a number of firsts
("milestones") in technology, the where-when-who of each
one. The IEEE spoken histories include interviews with
many of the movers-and-shakers, major to minor, of the
electronics industry, military, and aerospace field.
For other history there is the Radio Club of America,
the first membership organization in the USA and still
organized, containing a number of biographies of notable
radio pioneers and their work plus early radio sites and
stories. At the Corning Frequency Control website (now
acquired by another corporation ? and may have its URL
altered) is several papers on the history of quartz
crystal production in the USA before, during, and after
WW2 by participants in that work. There exist a great
number of websites on nearly all phases of electronics
and radio, done by individuals or groups who have been
there and done that without any "necessity" of first
getting an amateur radio license, then being a part of
the industry. Everything from a history of radio comms
in California state and local police (many photos) to a
specialty site about the SCR-300 walkie-talkie done by
the son of the chief designer at Galvin (later Motorola).
A New Jersey historical group has an extensive coverage
of the Coles, Evans, and Squier Laboratories very near
Fort Monmouth, NJ, the to-be-abandoned site of the US
Army Electronics Command...included in that is a large
description of the very first "moonbounce" dubbed Project
Diana that took place just after WW2 ended.

The number of places to get historical information on
electronics (including radio) is immense on the Internet.
It seems that many, many individuals have an INTEREST in
the whole sphere of the technology without having to "get
a ham license first." They were IN it before being told
they HAD to get that "first permission to enter" from
some blowhard control-freak ham.

He usually follows one of
those references with some sniping at the American Radio Relay League.

There is no denying that the publications output of the
ARRL is very large. They must do that in order to get the
income necessary to perform all their "free" services to
members. The ARRL has a virtual monopoly on amateur-
interest publications in the USA...no denying that, either.

But, the ARRL is also a political organization,
maintaining both a legal firm and a lobbying organization
in DC on retainer. As a political entity, they come
under the good old American tradition of being a target
for anyone who cares to comment. The League is NOT
without fault...except in the minds of its faithful
followers, the disciples of the Church of St. Hiram.

Having a virtual monopoly on radio-amateur-interest
publications also gives them a psychological power to
mold readers' opinions to those of the League hierarchy.
To deny that is to deny the power of marketing
techniques, of psychological propaganda activities that
go on daily in nearly all human activities.

Do you need to review the profile?

Len needs to review the profile.

No. "Profiles" work both ways. Heil and Miccolis have
both been "profiled" in here, not just by me but by
many others. It is the Nature of the (newsgroup) Beast.

Len seldom lets the truth get in the way of one of his monologues.

Tsk, Heil speaks an untruth.

OPINIONS are not "facts," just opinions.

Miccolis tries to manuever all opinion statements as "facts"
written by those he has problems with...thus garnering the
"accusations" of "untruth" or "error" when some just plain
don't like him. That he often comes across as an arch-
typical "mother superior" (complete with spanking ruler) is
lost on him. Prissy, as if sucking on sourballs when
writing up "error" "error" on those disagreeing with him.

Heil comes across as a stereotypical WW2 propaganda movie
Waffen SS officer, ordering others around, telling them
what they "should" do (his way, naturally). One can
almost see the sneer on his face, the monocle ready to
drop as his face gets more livid with order-barking,
the heels clicking.

I've noticed the talk of his workshop, but nothing about what comes out
of it.

Why should it? It is for MY enjoyment for myself, not
some "hey-look-at-me-and-what-marvelous-things-I've-done"
self promotion on some website. :-)

I've had it for four decades. Those I know have been
in it and we've talked mutual interest stuff about any
project then on-going. Material like that has been
exchanged privately. No need to make it public.

All vine, no fruit.

Southern California is not an ideal place for vinyards;
mid-state is best: Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino Counties.
California produces most of the wine consumed in the USA.

Southern California climate is good for citrus. My 35-
year-old lemon tree bears lemons all year around. The
dwarf orange hybrid is almost as productive.

For sure. SS is coming up fairly soon.

"Waffen?" Jahwhol! [click, click] :-)

Part B, Is the code requirement really keeping good people out?

Some Computer History - Military & Otherwise