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#11
February 22nd 05, 05:29 PM
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Mike Coslo wrote: wrote: Alun L. Palmer wrote: Mike Coslo wrote in : Alun L. Palmer wrote: Mike Coslo wrote in : Alun L. Palmer wrote: Mike Coslo wrote in : some snippage I don't know if any of us geniuses have though about it, but lets say in a country where a business can get successfully sued for a woman not knowing that here hot coffee was hot, and burning herself when trying to hold the darn thing between her legs. (sorry Phil, but what if she simply ruined her dress because the coffee was wet?- negligent design of the cup?) I wrote a lot of the stuff you are commenting on, Jim. It's a hazard of us not trimming threads! Same points apply The case centered around the fact that the coffee was *extremely* and unreasonably hot. Ask 10 people, and you'll get ten different answers if that was the question. I assume that anything in a styro cup is Hot, until I can examine it. But hot enough to give you 2nd degree burns? So lets have a newbie ham that fires up his/her kilowatt rig, and is half fried because no one told him not to touch the wirey thingies on the back of the box thingy. Ohh, I can see the successful lawsuits already! So what? There's no license required to operate houshold appliances, nor power tools, which can be extremely dangerous. There's no skills test to pump your own gasoline. Or to climb a ladder. I've nailed myself with 50 watts, enough to produce a painful burn and a cute little scar on the boo-boo finger. Some dunce that catches a ride on a thousand watts might just have a very successful lawsuit if we don't train them well. Who are they going to sue? The manufacturers of equipment, the VEC that administered the test. Find some deep pockets and sue, sue, sue. Then we better just give up, because there's no test to use a microwave oven or a table saw. One of the most dangerous substances the average person handles is gasoline, yet there's no test for how to deal with it. As a little example of the mindset, you might recall an accident along I-80 last year, a few miles from my QTH. Huge horrible pileup, many vehicles, many people killed, and a fiery mess that took a long time to clean up. The accident was related to a snow squall that blew up unexpectedly, and the excessive speed that the whole group was traveling at. While no charges were filed against anyone at the time, the families of the deceased are filing suit against the truck drivers *and* the companies they worked for. Hopefully the trucking companies have a good safety program. If someone was following too close for conditions, shouldn't they be liable? And on what grounds, compared to other electronic devices? Most of my appliances have warnings on them of electric shock potential, or of cutting, burning, whatever dangers also. There is a reason why they are there. Same warnings are on modern ham gear, aren't they? Nobody can be protected completely from a lawsuit. But if you are sued, you are well served to have forewarned potential litigation adversaries of the possible dangers of the devices they may use. Couple of stickers on the TS-50 and done. No need for a test, right? RF Safety should be the FIRST order of the day, and NO one should be a Ham until they are tested for RF safety to the ability to handle full legal limit. The reason for the RF safety questions is to prevent exposing *others* to a hazard. And the FCC has determined that the RF safety requirements of the Tech test are adequate for hams who use up to 1500 W power output on "meat-cooking frequencies". They're the *expert agency*, not the VEs or VECs. Heck, NCVEC wants to *lower* the written exams - too much math and regs, sez they. Shall we revisit "Amateur Radio in the 21st Century"? I wonder if Len Anderson and Brian Burke have read that wonderful piece, and what they think of it. I recommend it to all. Tells ya what the next step is. And those who think that limiting the finals voltage, or some other weird thing is the answer, are advised to think about things such as Technician Hams operating under supervision. It only takes a second to drop a paper and reach behind a Rig. Less time than the control op can react. I want those Technicians to be exposed to full power safety requirements. Anything else is criminally negligent. But they are already tested on full-power requirements. Yoiks! We're doing major time/subject shifting here, Jim! My comments several iterations of the thread ago were in relation to possible changing of test requirements, ala the W5YI proposal, where the newcomers are given a much simpler test, and things that I consider critically important, such as not having your hobby kill ya, would be dropped from the testing. Not the W5YI proposal - trhe NCVEC proposal. Everyone may disagree, but that's too bad. 73 de Jim, N2EY |
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