I very much agree with Don's last paragraph ... amateur radio needs
to go back to the basics!

In the '50s I got a conditional ... got a BC-348 from MARS and built
a phasing SSB transmitter ... operated as DL4UY ... then as K6IPD.
Replaced the old tx with one using a Collins mechanical filter and
bought an SX-101 ... it was still a lot of fun.  Moved and became
K5YTO ... was very active on 40 and 20 ... built a couple of 80M
mobile AM transmitters and receivers ... had a lot of fun.  Then the
BUY bug bit ... bought a KWM-2, an external VFO, and a 30L-1 ...
and quickly got tired of just talking ... played with RTTY ... even
got a couple of articles published in CQ ... but by the mid '60s
all the magic was gone, and haven't keyed a mic nor banged a key
since.  When I occasionally listen now on the ham bands what I mostly
hear are a bunch of old farts bragging about the new Yakamuchi
transceiver they just bought and how great it is ... nothing about
how to squeeze that last watt out of a pair of 807s or how to use
a PIC to automate the station.  As it is now amateur radio is little
more than high power Citizen's Band with a VFO.  If the rules were
changed to only allow homebrew equipment I'd be back on the air in
a New York minute!

 - Nick -


Don Hyde wrote:
>
> Personally, I found that theory galling in 1967 or so when, after much
> effort and expense to travel to an FCC testing facility, I flunked the 13
> WPM for a general.
>
> I loved building radios and wanted to make more of them.  As a novice, I
> traded 2 or 3 QSL cards and got very bored with that, and enjoyed some of my
> rag chewing sessions, but face-to-face at a club meeting was easier and more
> enjoyable.  What I really liked was building stuff.
>
> So I quit ham radio in frustration.  To me, it felt like most of the ham
> radio community was in some kind of time-warp, stuck in the 1920's when it
> was a real accomplishment to pound a few dots and dashes to distant places
> -- and it was when you had to wind your own coils to do it.  But to order a
> couple of boxes from a catalog and then learn an arcane and obsolete skill
> to play with them just seemed silly to me.
>
> So it's been over 30 years since I was a ham.  In the meantime (as a
> computer programmer, no less), I've built radios for a living at two
> different places, because doing it for a living was a lot more interesting
> than playing silly games with off-the-shelf radios.
>
> So I heartily approve of dumping the code altogether, outlawing ready-made
> radios, and moving ham radio back to its technical roots.  Any kind of
> modulation on any legal band, the weirder the better, as long as you built
> it yourself.  That might even save the hobby.