In article , ospam
(Larry Roll K3LT) writes:

In article ,
(William) writes:


(N2EY) wrote in message
e.com...
Tech at 5 years old
General at 6
Extra at 7

http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2004/01/29/1/?nc=1

73 de Jim, N2EY

I think you've finally found Larry's equal.

Billy:

Not hardly. Young Miss Clauson bears the unfortunate burden of being a
New Age, Dumbed-Down "Nickle" Extra. I got my Extra in 1983, and was
code tested at 20 WPM at the FCC Field Office in Baltimore. Moreover,
I learned my electrical theory from years of self-study as an avid
electronics
hobbyist, built dozens of homebrew and kit projects, and spent years as
an avid shortwave listener. I did all of this without the benefit of parents.

A wonderful, self-taught radio orphan...

who were amateur radio operators, and almost no exposure to other hams
as a result. Young Mattie has an Extra-class ticket, and the same privileges
as I do, but that's where our "equality" ends. She has to melt quite a few
pounds of 60/40 rosin-core, and make several thousand CW and digital
QSO's, to get close to me!

Larrah, NOBODY is as good as you...by your own definition.

Are you electronically connected here and formerly on FIDONET
BECAUSE no one could "come close to you?"

Try regular bathing. It might help.

LHA / WMD

ospam (Larry Roll K3LT) wrote in message ...
In article ,
(William) writes:

Billy:

Not hardly. Young Miss Clauson bears the unfortunate burden of being a
New Age, Dumbed-Down "Nickle" Extra.

Larry, you're so quick to tear down the achievements of a child.

Billy:

Point taken, and I offer all appropriate apologies to Miss Clauson.
However, her achievement, while a fairly notable one ***for a child,***
is no longer noteworthy for anyone over the age of, say, 10 years,
and certainly a meaningless one for an adult.

Larrah, at what age did you pass the Extra exam elements?

(N2EY) wrote in message . com...
ospam (Larry Roll K3LT) wrote in message ...

achievement only points accusingly to the fact that
present amateur radio licensing requirements are "dumbed-down" to
such an unreasonably low level that even a 7-year old can attain an
Amateur Extra-class license.

That's one way to look at it. The way I prefer to look at it is that a
bright and motivated young child set herself a goal and achieved it.

I don't see much of a connect between your particular preferences and
the highly-probable reality in these cases. Parents and other
relatives impose expectations on kids all the time. I sure did. I
"motivated" mine any number of times into "achieving" and in some of
those cases they met my expectations just to get me off their backs.

And while the novelty of a 7-year old
Extra is certainly "news" in the Amateur Radio community, it does
not point to a secure future for our hobby/service.

Why not? I don't see anything wrong with young people, or females,
getting
licenses. In fact, I think that sort of thing is just what ham radio
needs *more* of!

That's not what Larry meant. Over the 100 year history of ham radio
maybe we've had what, pick a number, twenty kids under ten licensed?
Versus around 1.5 million total U.S. hams? Those kids have all been
statistical anomalies pure and simple and have not had, nor will they
have any influence at all on the course of the service in the future.

Any of Mattie's young peers, without the support of a licensed parent,
and the material support of a functional station in their home, would
not likely achieve the same results.

Absolutely. How many of these kids *didn't* have a ham in the
immediate family?

So what? Part of what healthy families *DO* is support each other's
needs
and interests. In that family, it's clear that ham radio is a family
thing,
not something one family member does in seclusion from the rest.
That's a
good thing. It brings families together, crosses generational
barriers, helps
build a level of education, maturity and understanding that are
greatly needed.

I think you're over-preaching to the choir again here James.

And there is no better way to help a child learn than to get them
interested in the subject. Geography? Time zones? Math, science,
technology? An interest in ham radio helps with all of those.

Her folks shepherded her into ham radio beacause ham radio is a great
way for kids to learn geography??

(About the best we can hope for
is that other ham parents will take similar steps to induce their
children to become licensed, but that's about as far as it can go
until they become adults, with their own financial resources and the
adult prerogatives that go with it.

I never got any help in the ham radio area from my folks. So I was
delayed a few years in getting started.

Nothing unusual about that. A huge percentage of all of us kid hams
didn't have any particular "parental support" when we became hams. All
my folks cared about was that whatever it was that I was doing with a
soldering iron in the cellar didn't result in the Henny Carr the town
cop dragging me home by the scruff of my neck *again* for commiting
some bush-league juvenile atrocity or another. Worked for them and it
worked for me.

About the best face I can put on this is that young Mattie now has
the rest of her life to "grow" into the hobby. Hopefully, over the
years, she will acquire technical knowledge and operating skills which
will become equivalent to her Amateur Extra status.

She got 4 wrong on Element 4. How many did you get wrong on yours?

No-counter: We all know that there is *no* relationship between
passing the tests and the level of useful knowledge reqired to put
together an HF ham station. This NG has glaring examples of same.

As of now,
however, she is more of a stunt than the real thing.

How do you know?

He doesn't and neither do you. Fact is that it's not hard to find
instances of their folks pressuring kids into outstanding
accomplishments in order to have bragging rights about the kid. Which
I suspect is where Larry is coming from. Whether it's true in Mattie's
case is 100% conjecture.

I have no
doubt that when asked to engage in even a fairly low-level discussion
of technical and operating subjects, she will not be able to give
any reasonable accounting of herself, beyond perhaps the simple
recitation of answers to the exam questions.

You might be surprised.

She's probably somewhere between the opposite poles you two guys live
in.

Tell ya what, Larry, I'll fill a box with parts and you can come over
and build afunctioning ham rig out of them. No instructions, no
elmers, just parts and a book or two.
I did it when I was 13. I doubt
you could do it, Larry.

Virtually all yer kid ham predecessors could cobble rigs together
"Back in my day". It was almost the norm then. A lot higher
percentage of us designed and rolled our own than was the case "in
your day" a decade and a half later. By the time Larry got into ham
radio hombrewing no longer made any sense except in oddball cases so I
doubt he had any reason to even consider building his own rig. Entry
level rigs have been products of the era in which we came into the
service. YMMV and it obviously has.

Again, none of Mattie's inadequacies are her fault, she is just
the product of her parent's dreams.

Nonsense, Larry. She's an individual. Kids are not robots.

C'mon, you know better than that. Seven year olds are about as
compliant as they come. They're "individuals" only to the extent that
their parents and teachers allow them to act independently.

There are folks who walk into a test session with no ham license and
walk out with an Extra. That was going on before the VE system, too.
The barely-10-year-old I mentioned above had to do 13 wpm sending and
receiving plus the old Class B/General written.

I know Janie. Her father was Jesse Bieberman W3KT who is still a
legend. Honer Roll top-ender for decades, phone and cw dx contester,
25wpm with a straight key for 48 straight. Vice Director of the
Atlantic Division for decades and one of the most powerful voices in
Newington in those days. Ran the W3 buro single-handed also for
decades. Was also a private-school high school math instructor. You
think maybe Jane just got up one morning when she was ten and outta
nowhere declared that she was gonna pursue a ham ticket??


73 de Jim, N2EY

w3rv

In article ,
(William) writes:

(Larry Roll K3LT) wrote in message
...
In article ,
(William) writes:

Billy:

Not hardly. Young Miss Clauson bears the unfortunate burden of being a
New Age, Dumbed-Down "Nickle" Extra.

Larry, you're so quick to tear down the achievements of a child.

Billy:

Point taken, and I offer all appropriate apologies to Miss Clauson.
However, her achievement, while a fairly notable one ***for a child,***
is no longer noteworthy for anyone over the age of, say, 10 years,
and certainly a meaningless one for an adult.

Larrah, at what age did you pass the Extra exam elements?

Mental or physical age? :-)

LHA / WMD

Brian Kelly wrote:

(N2EY) wrote in message . com...

I think you're over-preaching to the choir again here James.

And there is no better way to help a child learn than to get them
interested in the subject. Geography? Time zones? Math, science,
technology? An interest in ham radio helps with all of those.

Her folks shepherded her into ham radio beacause ham radio is a great
way for kids to learn geography??

Not necessarily, Brian, but studying for an amateur ticket gets kids
fired up about learning. I can certainly see Jim's point about kids
becoming interested in geography, the sciences and math. It didn't work
toward interesting me in geometry though. I was caught reading QST
hidden within my open geometry book.


I never got any help in the ham radio area from my folks. So I was
delayed a few years in getting started.

Nothing unusual about that. A huge percentage of all of us kid hams
didn't have any particular "parental support" when we became hams. All
my folks cared about was that whatever it was that I was doing with a
soldering iron in the cellar didn't result in the Henny Carr the town
cop dragging me home by the scruff of my neck *again* for commiting
some bush-league juvenile atrocity or another. Worked for them and it
worked for me.

For the first few weeks of my interest, my dad actively discouraged me
with talk of amateur radio being a passing fad for me. He had visions
of mounds of equipment gathering dust in a closet. My mother encouraged
me and was able to convince my father that some of the meager family
income should be spent on a transmitter for me if I earned the money for
the receiver from my paper route.

My dad had and has no technical abilities whatever. My mother was
deathly afraid of electricity and wouldn't even clean my ham shack. She
just knew that lightning was going to enter the house via my antennas.
Both parents saw value in amateur radio as a wholesome activity, one
which would nurture an interest in science and possibly lead to a career
in electronics.


I know Janie. Her father was Jesse Bieberman W3KT who is still a
legend. Honer Roll top-ender for decades, phone and cw dx contester,
25wpm with a straight key for 48 straight. Vice Director of the
Atlantic Division for decades and one of the most powerful voices in
Newington in those days. Ran the W3 buro single-handed also for
decades.

....and ran the W3KT outgoing QSL forwarding service for a number of
years.

Dave K8MN

Len Over 21 wrote:

In article ,
(William) writes:


Larrah, at what age did you pass the Extra exam elements?

Mental or physical age? :-)

At which age did you pass an amateur radio license exam, Leonard?

Please continue your civil debate on morse code elimination.

Dave K8MN

Thanks for the info, Jim. Yes, I suspect the youngest would be girls since
males tend to mature at a later age. Check the posts in the newsgroup for
proof of that

73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA


"N2EY" wrote in message
...
Interesting story and obviously a very bright kid! Homeschooled, too.
The story documents other young hams, including the Philly area's W3OVV,
who earned her Class B at the Philly FCC office soon after her 10th
birthday -
in 1948. This was back in the days when *all* US ham licenses required 13
wpm
code, sending and receiving, and when the writtens were not only "secret"
but
also consisted in large part of essay and draw-a-diagram questions.

One interesting side note is that these young hams are almost all girls!

73 de Jim, N2EY

"Age requirements? We doan' need no steenkeen age requirements!"



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In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

(N2EY) wrote in message
.com...
ospam (Larry Roll K3LT) wrote in message
...

achievement only points accusingly to the fact that
present amateur radio licensing requirements are "dumbed-down" to
such an unreasonably low level that even a 7-year old can attain an
Amateur Extra-class license.

That's one way to look at it. The way I prefer to look at it is that a
bright and motivated young child set herself a goal and achieved it.

I don't see much of a connect between your particular preferences and
the highly-probable reality in these cases.

I just gave the opposite spin to Larry's.

Parents and other
relatives impose expectations on kids all the time.

That's part of the job.

I sure did. I
"motivated" mine any number of times into "achieving" and in some of
those cases they met my expectations just to get me off their backs.

That's a bit different from Larry's claim that the only reason was because the
mother pushed her.

And while the novelty of a 7-year old
Extra is certainly "news" in the Amateur Radio community, it does
not point to a secure future for our hobby/service.

Why not? I don't see anything wrong with young people, or females,
getting
licenses. In fact, I think that sort of thing is just what ham radio
needs *more* of!

That's not what Larry meant.

Sure sounded like it to me.

Over the 100 year history of ham radio
maybe we've had what, pick a number, twenty kids under ten licensed?

I dunno. Maybe a couple hundred.

Look up a book called "Radio Rescue" by Lynne Barasch. Ten year old ham in
1923. True story.

Versus around 1.5 million total U.S. hams?

Where'd you get a number that big? Prolly more like a million.

Those kids have all been
statistical anomalies pure and simple and have not had, nor will they
have any influence at all on the course of the service in the future.

Not my point at all.

Point is that two of things working against ham radio today are lack
of youngsters and the tendency of some people to avoid hobbies the whole
family can't enjoy. Family of hams beats both those trends.

Any of Mattie's young peers, without the support of a licensed parent,
and the material support of a functional station in their home, would
not likely achieve the same results.

Absolutely. How many of these kids *didn't* have a ham in the
immediate family?

Few if any. So what? The music teacher's kid is probably going to have more
access to instruments than the plumber's.

So what? Part of what healthy families *DO* is support each other's
needs
and interests. In that family, it's clear that ham radio is a family
thing,
not something one family member does in seclusion from the rest.
That's a
good thing. It brings families together, crosses generational
barriers, helps
build a level of education, maturity and understanding that are
greatly needed.

I think you're over-preaching to the choir again here James.

I don't.

And there is no better way to help a child learn than to get them
interested in the subject. Geography? Time zones? Math, science,
technology? An interest in ham radio helps with all of those.

Her folks shepherded her into ham radio beacause ham radio is a great
way for kids to learn geography??

Heck no - that's just a side benefit.

(About the best we can hope for
is that other ham parents will take similar steps to induce their
children to become licensed, but that's about as far as it can go
until they become adults, with their own financial resources and the
adult prerogatives that go with it.

I never got any help in the ham radio area from my folks. So I was
delayed a few years in getting started.

Nothing unusual about that.

'zactly. Which is why it took me a little longer. If I'd had real support, I'd
a been
really dangerous. bwaahaahaaa

A huge percentage of all of us kid hams
didn't have any particular "parental support" when we became hams. All
my folks cared about was that whatever it was that I was doing with a
soldering iron in the cellar didn't result in the Henny Carr the town
cop dragging me home by the scruff of my neck *again* for commiting
some bush-league juvenile atrocity or another. Worked for them and it
worked for me.

'zactly. One of the biggest parental jobs is to get 'em interested in
something - anything - that's relatively harmless compared to what's out
there. Which they may get involved in anyway, but it beats taking the
hands off approach.

With some kids, a lot of support is needed. With others, the best way to kill
the kid's interest is to get involved too much.

About the best face I can put on this is that young Mattie now has
the rest of her life to "grow" into the hobby. Hopefully, over the
years, she will acquire technical knowledge and operating skills which
will become equivalent to her Amateur Extra status.

She got 4 wrong on Element 4. How many did you get wrong on yours?

No-counter: We all know that there is *no* relationship between
passing the tests and the level of useful knowledge reqired to put
together an HF ham station.

Of course. Point is she didn't just pass. Then again, she got 4 more
wrong than our buddy in Allentown....

This NG has glaring examples of same.

Oh yes - including one or two who couldn't even get any ham license, despite
years-old predictions...

As of now,
however, she is more of a stunt than the real thing.

How do you know?

He doesn't and neither do you.

And that's the point. Larry made all kinds of statements about someone he
doesn't know at all.

Fact is that it's not hard to find
instances of their folks pressuring kids into outstanding
accomplishments in order to have bragging rights about the kid. Which
I suspect is where Larry is coming from. Whether it's true in Mattie's
case is 100% conjecture.

Bingo.

I have no
doubt that when asked to engage in even a fairly low-level discussion
of technical and operating subjects, she will not be able to give
any reasonable accounting of herself, beyond perhaps the simple
recitation of answers to the exam questions.

You might be surprised.

She's probably somewhere between the opposite poles you two guys live
in.

And that's the point.

Tell ya what, Larry, I'll fill a box with parts and you can come over
and build afunctioning ham rig out of them. No instructions, no
elmers, just parts and a book or two.
I did it when I was 13. I doubt
you could do it, Larry.

Virtually all yer kid ham predecessors could cobble rigs together
"Back in my day".

I could, too. Many of my counterparts could. A few couldn't.

It was almost the norm then. A lot higher
percentage of us designed and rolled our own than was the case "in
your day" a decade and a half later. By the time Larry got into ham
radio hombrewing no longer made any sense except in oddball cases so I
doubt he had any reason to even consider building his own rig.

Coax can be had with the connectors already on, too. And premade G5RVs
often make more sense than rolling one's own...

Entry
level rigs have been products of the era in which we came into the
service. YMMV and it obviously has.

The irony is that the box of parts I'd give Larry would include many parts
that were only recently given to me by an anonymous benefactor....

Again, none of Mattie's inadequacies are her fault, she is just
the product of her parent's dreams.

Nonsense, Larry. She's an individual. Kids are not robots.

C'mon, you know better than that.

Yes I do. Kids are harder to train than robots.

Seven year olds are about as
compliant as they come.

HAW!!

They're "individuals" only to the extent that
their parents and teachers allow them to act independently.

I know some you oughta meet...

There are folks who walk into a test session with no ham license and
walk out with an Extra. That was going on before the VE system, too.
The barely-10-year-old I mentioned above had to do 13 wpm sending and
receiving plus the old Class B/General written.

I know Janie. Her father was Jesse Bieberman W3KT who is still a
legend. Honer Roll top-ender for decades, phone and cw dx contester,
25wpm with a straight key for 48 straight. Vice Director of the
Atlantic Division for decades and one of the most powerful voices in
Newington in those days. Ran the W3 buro single-handed also for
decades. Was also a private-school high school math instructor.

I knew him too. See above about the music teacher's kid. Only in this case
it's more like Ormandy's kid.

You
think maybe Jane just got up one morning when she was ten and outta
nowhere declared that she was gonna pursue a ham ticket??

Naw, she was copying code when she was six. And still active with the same
call.

At least nobody has yet accused the VEs of "fraud" (with absolutely no
evidence)
as has happened here before.

73 de Jim, N2EY

In article , Dave Heil
writes:

Len Over 21 wrote:

In article ,
(William) writes:

Larrah, at what age did you pass the Extra exam elements?

Mental or physical age? :-)

At which age did you pass an amateur radio license exam, Leonard?

Never tried, snarly dave.

I passed my First Phone exam on the first try in Chicago at an FCC
field office in March 1956. Never looked back.

Now Larrah, the self-professed paragon of determination and moral
virtue, once bragged and carried on that his "summa cum laude"
standings in post-service college would get him any top spot job
in human resources after graduation. He now drives a bus.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

Please continue your civil debate on morse code elimination.

As soon as you show the way, snarly dave.

So far you haven't exhibited much civility in that regard.

But, I am always optimistic and hope for the best...

Keep the morse faith. Beep.

LHA / WMD

And there is no better way to help a child learn than to get them
interested in the subject. Geography? Time zones? Math, science,
technology? An interest in ham radio helps with all of those.

They'd need HF privs for some of that. HF propagation is needed to get
your signal to Pottsylvania...




Her folks shepherded her into ham radio beacause ham radio is a great
way for kids to learn geography??

I don't know what they do in K-12 grades now, but way back when I was a kid,
geography was taught in grades 4 thru 7. "What's the capital of South
Dakota?"
"Where is Red China?" "What voltage do they apply to the electrified
barbed wire
surrounding the Communist Bloc?" ;-) We learned about evil Godless
communism
in geography class....







Nothing unusual about that. A huge percentage of all of us kid hams
didn't have any particular "parental support" when we became hams. All
my folks cared about was that whatever it was that I was doing with a
soldering iron in the cellar didn't result in the Henny Carr the town
cop dragging me home by the scruff of my neck *again* for commiting
some bush-league juvenile atrocity or another. Worked for them and it
worked for me.


They didn't get paranoid about your messing with dangerous electricity?
:-) My parents
knew about electricity and had no real fear of it, but my grandmother
had no clue at
all about electricity. She grew up somewhere near Scranton PA before
they had
electricity there....



She got 4 wrong on Element 4. How many did you get wrong on yours?

3. Well, 2 on 4A and 1 on 4B.








Tell ya what, Larry, I'll fill a box with parts and you can come over
and build afunctioning ham rig out of them. No instructions, no
elmers, just parts and a book or two.
I did it when I was 13. I doubt
you could do it, Larry.



Virtually all yer kid ham predecessors could cobble rigs together
"Back in my day". It was almost the norm then. A lot higher
percentage of us designed and rolled our own than was the case "in
your day" a decade and a half later. By the time Larry got into ham
radio hombrewing no longer made any sense except in oddball cases so I
doubt he had any reason to even consider building his own rig. Entry
level rigs have been products of the era in which we came into the
service. YMMV and it obviously has.

Many novice setups were built out of junked tube TV parts and modified
AM radio
receivers. QST published many articles about such. The designs were
such that you
could have something that worked without causing a lot of TVI. Designs
that were
not fussy about adjustments and component selection. Which is what you
want in
manufacturing, something that can be thrown together and always work.