From: John Smith on Aug 22, 3:22 pm

Dan:

What is "good for amateur radio" has to be "what is good for the people",
and NOT "what is good for my klick."

No, John, it IS for their clique...except they can't see anything
but their clique as being "amateur radio."

Which is what you are really
stating, it is just a bunch of "good ole cb buddies", but thinking of
themselves in some glorified manner!

To Dan the ARS stands for Archaic Radiotelegraphy Society.

Kind of a low-grade "one-world, one-government" kind of thing,
all molded around THEIR concept of how the hobby "is."

Dannie can't accept anything else but HIS beliefs. For other,
different ideas he gets hostile, volatile, tries to batter
the different to the floor tile.

Disgusting really... and yes, I
remember a time when it was NOT this way, you had a few anti-social
weirdos who were loners and thought themselves special because of a hobby
license, but that seems to have become catching and has almost infected
the whole lot, the sane ones are rather few and far between these days...

We differ, John. I can easily remember a mere two decades ago
on visiting the Lockheed ARC...when Lockheed was having a lot of
difficulties with the state and the city of Burbank. In general
a bunch of disheartening, don't-tell-me-nothing-because-we-rule
group of "extras" whose major dissatisfaction was really that
they were in imminent danger of being on LAY OFF.

Lockheed California eventually moved out entire from the Burbank
area (a division is still at AF Plant 42 in Palmdale) and ALL
the old Lockheed buildings have been razed, hardly any rubble is
left. The fabled Skunk Works in Building 82 was one of the first
to be torn down. The Lockheed ARC is but a shell of its former
self and the laid-off Lockheed workers (who didn't want to go to
Georgia) are off muttering in their isolated little corners.

The huge Lockheed production complex along Empire Avenue just
disappeared and, like a Phoenix from the ashes, the fabulous
new Empire Center of many, many stores and services, two office
buildings and two hotels grew on the place where all the famous
Lockheed aircraft were built. All that remains of Lockheed is
the silhouettes of the Vega, the Constellation, the P-38, and
the SR-71 on the parking lot section signs. Rebirth.

I was reminded of this from yesterday when my wife and I were at
a store in the Empire Center. At the large entrance we saw an old
geezer regaling a couple of younger women about his work at
Lockheed ("over there where building 15 was" "we built
airplanes!"). The young women were polite, smiled, but clearly
didn't find any interest or amusement at this. Eventually the
old geezer wound down and all left. In one way that's the way
it will be with U.S. amateur radio. Rebirth. The new replacing
the old. The old will become a memory, one not treasured so
emotionally as by the old-timers. The future will be different,
brighter, full of new things. New leaders will form and lead.
New-timers will enjoy the new environment. Oldsters will grouse
and bitch, complaining mightily about it not being as good as
"the old days." Of course not. "The old days" were only a
figment of imagination after all, a nostalgia of never-was, an
emotion of discovery only to individuals then new to radio.

"Amateur Worship is a Mental Disorder", is going to be the title of a book
I am working on! grin

There ARE those of that disorder. They exist. They have
transported
themselves to their own imaginary fairyland, a lifestyle of
imagining
they are "masters of radio"...but "masters" only of an imaginary
world of the 30s and 40s long gone...when Kode was King and all was
simple and orderly, fixed in place.

I look forward to a FUTURE, not a past. I was in the past and
all wasn't as good as it is now. The future looks like a better
place, something to enjoy, to have fun in, free of the ties to
old standards and practices that are out of place now.

out old