RadioBanter - View Single Post

September 21st 03, 05:54 AM

(Len Over 21) wrote in
:

In article , Leo
writes:

Very well said, Dee - anything is possible if you want to do it badly
enough..

Yeah, riiiiiight, "Leo." :-)

Want to be a world-reknowned theoretical astrophysicist? No
problem, just contract some bad neural disease, go to an ivy-covered
UK college and write a few books. All you have to do is WILL
yourself...for about 3 millenia. By that time, astrophysics will
have become "easy" for you.

Want to be a famous artist and be featured in national magazines
even though you don't have have any art talent at all? No problem.
WILL yourself to draw/paint, spend hours at it...but hire a very
good publicist so you can become a "Grandpa Moses." [we've already
had a Grandma]

I am certainly no prodigy at morse, electronics, martial
arts, cooking, business management or anything else - but I have always
been able to accomplish the things that I was motivated to do.

...or conveniently FORGET those things you were not able to do...

Mind you, it took me until I was 45 to become motivated enough to
learn morse code - but I wanted to get on HF, focused on the goal,
bought some training software online and passed the 5 wpm test four
weeks later.

Oh, my. At age 20 I was ALREADY ON HF...and on VHF, on UHF,
on microwaves in Big Time communications before reaching 24...all
without any sort of morsemanship.

At age 26 I thought it might be a fun thing to learn morse code and
get a ham license to augment my First Phone license passed in '56.
Wasn't WORTH it to listen to all that beeping. I'd already done
three years of communications in the US Army, all of it
trans-Pacific, all without using or having to know morse code.

Doesn't make sense to me that, in this new millennium, AMATEURS
still DEMAND that everyone know morse in order to get a HAM license.

Conversely, I have wanted to learn to play the guitar
since I was a teenager - not sufficiently enough, though, as I never
did do it. Which, in retrospect, is probably a good thing....

What?!? NO MOTIVATION!?! Terrible!

Can't you even do simple chords on a git-box?

I never had that problem. Next door neighbor was a part-time
guitarist. Designed and built a portable amplifier to fit inside his
guitar. Not a big boom-box with 5 KW of acoustic power...was way
back in '63 when guitars were first getting popular. Design from
scratch was no problem for me, nor the hardware. I liked drums
better.

Talent has very little to do with accomplishment (it does relate to
the level of excellence that one can attain, but to become reasonably
proficient in anything talent is not a factor), especially in ventures
based primarily on rote repetition like morse, Karate, or learning a
language.

HAH!!!!

I happen to have a talent for languages and have the physical
equipment to speak with very little "English" dialect. I know
others MORE literate (through formal schooling) in the same language
as I know but have atrocious accents and can't always form written
sentences in that language. They can spend decades of such study
and will never get it down properly. Not a problem for me.

I just don't see any sense in maintaining a federal morse code test
in this day and age for a HOBBY activity. I've been doing REAL HF
comm long before nearly all of these old-timer morsemen without
needing any HOBBY code test.

Blaming a lack of talent for failure to accomplish something reflects
on a persons' own inability to accept responsibility for their own
actions - successful people, quite simply, go out and get what they
want. Or, in the words of Albert Gray:

Yes, WANT violin playing ability on par with Itzak Perlman badly
enough and it can be done?

WANT to be a baseball great like the Mariner's John Olerud and it
can be done just by determination and practice?

"Will and idea" (and determination) is all that is necessary?

I don't think so.

The existance of the morse code test for an AMATEUR radio license
is NOT some moral bull**** thing of "will and determination."
There's NO divine idea that the morse code test must always be.
AMATEUR radio is a hobby, not a Premium Life Accomplishment.

I think some of you have wigged-out too far and need investigation
for Illegal substance abuse...

LHA

Exactly my point, although more eloquently stated