What I see as the REAL problem are those "veterans" in the HOBBY
who have become so obsessed with their own ideas of whom is superior to
whom that they will deliberately make life on the air miserable for
anyone who doesn't measure up to their own standards. I think such
people would be doing much better to offer polite-but-firm correction to
operating errors, and be willing to SHARE their knowlege as opposed to
zealously guarding it like some grumpy dragon guarding their hoard.

When I got my "extra lite" :-) I made a number of "newbie" type errors,
but soon learned.
What I don't like is when, years before on learning my way around packet
on 2m, I made
some newbie errors and then learned, but some other packet operator
assumed that
I would always make such errors and got banned off his maibox BBS. (I
hadn't distingushed
between private mailboxes and more public BBSs just yet, and posted a
general ham interest
article). A polite but firm correction would have been enough. Turns
out other people
had some problems with him....


You may not like the ARRL for whatever reason. Fine. That's your
choice (I'm proud to be a 'Lifer' myself). But would you find it so very
hard to remember and respect "The Amateur's Code" that they publish? It
dates all the way back to the League's founding, and the days of Hiram
Percy Maxim (without whom we wouldn't even HAVE Amateur Radio).

Chill out. The only things that will truly kill amateur radio are
forgetting its origins, WHY we have it today, and more anger and hatred
at newbies just because they have an easier time getting licensed than
some of us did.