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#22
September 4th 04, 04:41 AM
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In article , Leo
writes: On 03 Sep 2004 05:40:43 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote: In article , Leo writes: On 02 Sep 2004 04:18:56 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote: In article , Leo writes: On 01 Sep 2004 20:09:31 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote: snip The Notice is available at: http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/inter.../sf06456e.html Thank you for the link! Any Canadian radio amateurs care to comment on that? I'm not Canadian, but I think it fails to follw the KISS principle. They want to add an Intermediate licence to their Basic and Advanced. Why don't they just abolish the 'Plus' categories (i.e. plus Morse)? That would be much simpler. I'm not Canadian either as a "Carbo-American," but I think the "plus" category is a sop to the existing Canadian mighty morsemen. Canada must have its share of olde-fahrt hamme morsemen and those must be "satisfied." I am  - and fully agree with your observation that there are -um-a fair number of 'old school' amateurs up here, who do not believe in the abolishment of the Code Test (approximately a third of the respondents to the RAC survey on this subject). The RAC proposal attempts to meet the needs of both the "Pro Morse" and "No Morse" factions of the hobby - in quite an interesting way. Both sides win - either path leads to a full HF-access Amateur license. Now dat's a typically Canadian solution, eh? I'm not familiar with that sort of "typicalness." Been in here in this ultra-conservative retro-tech newsgroup too much. :-) Hmmm - not good for a guy like you, living in one of the more free thinking areas of the country.... Oh, there's plenty of independent thinking going on here, trying to look at all sides to see which one seems best. That I learned from design work...and trying to do a good job. (an aside ... I have relatives in Redondo Beach - spent a few happy summers there when I was a teenager learning Californian philosophy.... and a fair bit of anatomy too, on the beach....wow! Southern California was the birthplace of the space shuttle and the Bikini...not to mention lots of good airplanes along the way. The beach cities down here (Redondo, Hermosa, etc., etc.) DO have some very nice views of the, er, ocean... :-) What........ocean? ...while driving along the Pacific Coast Highway. Safety first, fun and games afterwards. :-) I would say instead it is a GOOD COMPROMISE and to the credit of the Radio Amateurs of Canada and Industry Canada. I believe that the proposal is a good one - inasmuch as it provides access to HF without the requirement of Morse testing. It does recommend that Morse testing be made available should the applicant desire it - I have no problem with that. Status quo - or not. Your choice. That's fair and equitable in my viewpoint. Mighty macho morsemen will disagree and ignite (again) Flame Wars instead of simple bonfires. That would be typical......unfortunately. Realistically, this hobby has more than enough breadth to accomodate the needs of both the Morse and No Morse proponents. That should be true but for the outraged ultra-conservatives. Too many of that group are anal-retentive in trying to keep the status quo. It recommends raising the pass marks on the exams - good idea, most believe that they are way too low right now (60% is a pass on both the Basic and Advanced tests currently). No issue there. That's good in my view. Mine too. The more knowledge, the better. Can't have enough knowledge. That's for sure! It is indeed a compromise intended to satisfy both the Morse and No Morse factions of the hobby - but it does so with considerably more elegance than the ARRL proposal, in my opinion. ARRL is not fully into this new millennium. :-) Some wonder if they ever made it into the last millennium... In some ways, only the first quarter of it..... Frankly, they seem too concerned with playing politics than guiding the hobby into the future. I see it as internal politics, trying to preserve what they have and who has it. The league DOES do some good work. The anti-BPL work is very good. BPL is a threat to ALL who use HF and should transcend any politics. True, and they have done a great job of publicizing the threat to HF and beyond that BPL poses. Not to the electronic industry although one editorial in Electronic Design News made a mention of their website. There hasn't been a lot of comment on BPL in the industry press. One reason may be that BPL doesn't offer that much in the way of possible new products to be designed and made...in comparison to any of the many wireless schemes which have gotten the PR. The through-the-AC-line schemes have shown up as NOT having acceptance in the market...quite possibly for the fact that so few actually work as advertised. What remains is the venerable X10 system and a couple copycats plus the new Black & Decker line for remote controlling, all operating at much lower bandwidth. For much of the rest of it, I see it as the league trying to survive. They have failed to gain as much as a quarter of all licensed U.S. amateurs as members over the last decade-plus. ARRL has filed U.S. federal income tax showing that they are a $12 million (in 2002) business. "Tax-exempt" status, yes, but a business nonetheless. Membership dues aren't enough to keep the buildings warmed, staff paid, electricity for the equipment bought. Their major monetary source is QST ad sales (to keep QST afloat) and PUBLISHING. If they lose that publishing arm they can kiss their much-heralded free services for members goo-bye. Many in Newington would be looking for new work. The RAC proposal to IC was based on an Internet survey which was open to all licensed Canadian amateurs (not just RAC members). The ARRL proposal seems to have been developed autonomously by the Directors, with little (if any) input from the Amateur community. No wonder everyone was surprised when it was filed! That's the thing...the entrenched "we know what's best for you (members) and everyone else" attitude. Many don't agree with that and haven't joined even if they can afford the small annual dues. The league got away with that for decades before the Internet went public in 1991. They did all the interfacing with the FCC, most of the lobbying, then promoted themselves as the Big Brother of all U.S. hams. They managed to convince a hard core of Believers who are outraged and ready to fight anyone who says the least little negative thing about the league. [witness some of its Believers in here] I have! I hope you meant that as "witnessing" not as a Believer...? I'm in favour of it - and my comments to that effect have been filed with IC, as of today. Good on you! I have to agree with Hans Brakob in that our northern neighbor in Norse America is doing the right thing for their future. Modernization is long overdue. [excuse me...NORTH America...;-) ] heh.....that brought back memories of Leif The Lucky from grade school! Norsemen were the first European discoverers of North America. Yup - long before Columbus got lost and thought this was India! He should have bought that Garwin GPS handheld when he had the chance... :-) .....or stopped using his sextant as a telescope Settled in what is now Canada (New Foundland) for a while. Dunno why they left...maybe they objected to speaking French? ...they probably left because they couldn't find jobs (the unemployment rate in Newfie is a whopping 20% or so - WAY above the national average of just over 7%!) A definite NOT GOOD situation there. My sympathies with the workers not working. Mine too. Been there a few times myself (isn't Telecom grand!) - nothing worse than no job when you want to work! Been there, done that, courtesy of the "job security" in aerospace. Fortunately, there were lots of aerospace companies in southern California. Haven't been in many "employment insurance" lines, but once is enough. Industry Canada has much simpler regulations for their radio amateurs but accomplish the same thing in the hobby. Well said. The less regulations, the better the hobby! .....and the less I gotta remember.... Band limits and other technical necessities should be enough. Fully agreed. Up here, bandplans for the various operating modes are compiled by the RAC, and adhered to by gentlemen's agreement. It is absolutely legal to operate SSB on 7.100 MHz, or CW on 7.250 MHz, but it just isn't done! Peer pressure is the only enforcement tool required. There's a slightly different peer pressure active down here. :-) Has much to do with personality conflicts and self-righteousness, much less about actual radio technology. Yeah, I see that alright! ARRL is 90 years old and they have not had much turnover at Hq. That leads to "cronyism" in Hq and a resultant status-quo thinking which has contributed to their lack of getting new membership. St. Hiram hisself remained president since day one until he got too old to show up at the office. Dave Sumner is "executive president" and isn't votable out of office. While there is a BoD at the ARRL, the publications arm takes its direction direct from Hq staff. That leads to a concentration of who-runs-what to the Newington group despite all the self-promotion of "democratic principle" BoD "discussions." That publishing arm is a mighty strong venue for getting readers to think the way the Hq advisers say they should. Not that many publications left for radio amateurs down here. What many of the league disciples fail to realize is that whatever gets published out of Newington is the decision of the editors, not some etheral "will of the ham community." Hq staff have the very final say-so on anything in print...and print with real ink on real paper doesn't disappear or get revised easily. That is Real Opinion Making Power! BTW, that electronic test that can run on any PC looked rather neat! Simple way to do it and the computer does most of the paperwork as well as keeping a record of it being done and when. It is pretty neat indeed! Free, too! Rack up some points for the RAC and IC. They deserve applause. Normally, one should be wary of free things from the Government.... Now, now... :-) Learning skills of long ago just to get a license in here and now is nowhere close to being progressive and just doesn't keep up with the times. Again, fully agreed. Especially since the rest of the world is moving towards the future - we would look pretty silly clinging steadfastly to the past. In amateur radio technology, the "outsiders," the designers and manufacturers (mostly off-shore to North America) are the ones doing it. Names like Icom, Yaesu, Kenwood, Panasonic (Matsu****a), JRC, etc., etc. etc...in HF, VHF, UHF, and now beginning to get into the microwave region. I chanced upon a 5.8 GHz cordless phone at Fry's Electronics (the huge consumer electronics supermarket chain of about a dozen in this corner of the U.S.). That's pushing into C band, something impossible to have on the consumer market with vacuum tubes. Full digital two-way, low-power radio with all the extra features of the L band cordless units. Affordable stuff. There are so many cellular telephone subscribers down here that our Census Bureau reports that one in three citizens has one. A little, almost minuature, two way radio working at the bottom of the microwave region! Newer models complete with little cameras and keyboards built in. Those extras may be fluff to many but they've all been crammed into that little tiny package. Not to mention that many of those units integrate several radically different cellular protocols seamlessly in that package - mine is AMPS 800 MHz analog, D-AMPS (TDMA) 800 MHz digital, and CDMA 1.9 GHz digital. All in a package that fits in your palm, and runs for a week on its dinky Li-ion battery. And free, with a three-year cell company contract! Unbelievable technology, compared to just a few years ago. Absolutely phenomenal compared to 20 years ago. Agreed. But... Several of the Believers in here will cuss at cell phones because they aren't "real" radios one puts on a nice desk in the "shack" in prominent view. Those same Believers will trashmouth VHF and above the same way...HTs are called "the shack on the belt." :-) Digital devices, in particular the family called microcontrollers, made all of that possible in such small size. I doubt there is any "good" transceiver for HF designed and made in the last decade that doesn't have a microcontroller as the basic control and display handler, the one that makes 10 Hz increment accurate tuning possible by making the internal DDS control words. I'm still incredulous at the amazing leaps forward in technology since I first began working (way back when tubes were king). Getting equipment to work reliably at high UHF was an accomplishment worthy of much praise and doing the same in the microwave region was almost a miracle. Now its become an accomplished fact. Way back when of the 50s, only the well-heeled hams could afford the near-precisely tuneable Collins rigs with their "PTOs" that could find their way to better than the nearest Kilocycle, receive or transmit. All others were stuck with approximations using squint-read dials and "bandspread" tuning set with the aid of a 100 KHz crystal "calibrator." Now anyone can get a direct digital readout down to 10 Hz of the correct frequency. No sweaty-dah. Absolutely - my car radio has far better frequency stability than most of the test equipment that I operated back in the 70s. No one seems to think of the temperature extremes that an auto or other vehicle goes through. :-) The Phase Locked Loop made it possible and digital devices makes the PLL practical. The first PLL was done in France in 1932. It wasn't until the mid 1960s that they started appearing in radio communications equipment...starting in low microwave oscillator units using samplers to get the uWv into the loop. That same PLL principle made the HP Vector Voltmeter possible and the big line of self-calibrateable test systems that demand accurate tuning returns to perform computer-controlled testing and self-calibration. Frequency counters are digital instruments. Those have shrunk to ridiculously small sizes in marrying a microcontroller to an LCD display backlit by LEDs, using a maximum of four ICs. AADE has a fine line of those little guys, well worth it to revitalize an old mechanical dial read-out rig. It used to be that tuning up a tube transmitter actually took some finesse and a little experience to do. Now the transistor PAs don't need it and have automatic protection in case the VSWR gets too high. Need to match to a "funny" antenna? No sweat, there's several automatic-tuning tuners on the market, takes the worry out of getting as much as possible into the antenna and out to the world. Push-button ease. I still use my old Heathkit SB-400 SSB tube transmitter on the air - with the antenna tuner, it's a handful to tune up, compared to the newer rigs. But, if I actually manage to raise someone with it, it's a minor miracle, and I feel much more a part of the process than if I simply turned the tuning knob on a more modern unit. Plus, I bought it DOA and completely overhauled it back to life - as a result, I'm very familiar with the inner workings of the thing. My own personal contribution to the past, I suppose.....that, or I'm too cheap to buy a new rig - or both There's nostalgia and then there's nostalgia. :-) A long time ago I did those "tune-ups" the old fashioned way for a couple years. Bloody nuisance when there's three dozen big transmitters under your care and NONE of the is taken down out of circuit unless some high rank says so. :-) I can't see why anyone wants to trashmouth automatic antenna tuners which would reduce the amount of knob-twisting to a minimum. Solid-state PAs of today don't need any special knob-twisting...and they have built-in coupler sensing to tell the user if the VSWR is getting dangerous to the final. 73, Leo PS - WTF is a "Carbo-American"? - never heard that one before! Came from a couple of comic strips running in the L.A. Times as well as elsewhere. Backlash to the "Adkins Diet" craze. :-) [or "Atkins Diet" or whatever..."zero carbohydrates"] Got it - we have been bombarded by the "Adkins" diet craze up here too. It's nothing that a Big Mac and a couple of beers won't fix I'm a supporter of Krispy Kreme myself. :-) Yup, we have them here too - good stuff! Too good, in fact.... heh heh heh...I'm waiting for one of my "fan club" to make more trashmouth about that... :-) Heh. This reminds me of the story of Micro Henry, who took Millie Amp for a ride on his Mega Cycle - ah, the good old college days..... Old story, really, I think it goes back as far as WW2 days. I managed to locate this classic work of electrical prose at the following site: CAUTION: Not for the faint of heart or pathologically moralistic reader ......you know who you are Title: "The Sex Life Of An Electron" http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStre...do/goodies.htm "The Physicists Party" isn't too bad either What will the "children" think of that? :-) |
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#23
September 4th 04, 07:19 AM
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Len Over 21 wrote:
ARRL is 90 years old and they have not had much turnover at Hq. That's simply a falsehood. That leads to "cronyism" in Hq and a resultant status-quo thinking which has contributed to their lack of getting new membership. That many no-code Techs have as their sole amateur radio station, a single, under $200 hand-held 2m FM transceiver which they use only on local repeaters might itself be a contributing factor. St. Hiram hisself remained president since day one until he got too old to show up at the office. Yeah. Dying will do that to you. HPM was in office for about 22 years. That's about thirty years less than you've been a PROFESSIONAL in electronics. Did you retire when you got too old to show up at the office? Dave Sumner is "executive president" and isn't votable out of office. You'd better check your facts, Mr. Wizard. While there is a BoD at the ARRL, the publications arm takes its direction direct from Hq staff. That leads to a concentration of who-runs-what to the Newington group despite all the self-promotion of "democratic principle" BoD "discussions." Self-promotion of "democratic principle"? BOD "discussions"? Why the quotation marks? The ARRL does indeed operate under democratic principles. Division Directors are voted in and out with regularity. BOD "discussions" are meetings of the board of directors. That publishing arm is a mighty strong venue for getting readers to think the way the Hq advisers say they should. Yeah, that's it, Leonid: The readers have been brainwashed into thinking the way their Newington Masters want them to think. You really should get your own conspiracy talk show. Not that many publications left for radio amateurs down here. Down where? What many of the league disciples fail to realize is that whatever gets published out of Newington is the decision of the editors, not some etheral "will of the ham community." Really? Do you think the editors of "Gourmet" and the editors of "Time" and "National Geographic" engage in such practices? By golly, you may have uncovered one of the big scandals of all time! Come to think of it, I've been a member of the National Geographic Society for over thirty years. I've never had an opportunity to vote on any issue before the society. I've voted in ARRL elections for four decades. Hq staff have the very final say-so on anything in print...and print with real ink on real paper doesn't disappear or get revised easily. I don't think any of us knew this. Are you telling us that once a magazine or book is published, the pages and ink can remain intact for long periods? That is Real Opinion Making Power! Maybe you should start publishing your diatribes on real paper with real ink. Then you'd have some Real Opinion Making Power. Several of the Believers in here will cuss at cell phones because they aren't "real" radios one puts on a nice desk in the "shack" in prominent view. They will? Cell phones are certainly real radios. They are low power transceivers which will work over relatively short ranges. One must pay in order to use them. Cordless phones are real radios too. Like yourself, neither are a part of in amateur radio. Those same Believers will trashmouth VHF and above the same way...HTs are called "the shack on the belt." :-) Many, many of us own HT's. A ham whose only amateur radio station is an HT may be referred to as a "shack-on-a-belt" type. You aren't yet eligible for that status. A long time ago I did those "tune-ups" the old fashioned way for a couple years. Bloody nuisance when there's three dozen big transmitters under your care and NONE of the is taken down out of circuit unless some high rank says so. :-) I thought you were "big time". You needed someone's okay to pull a transmitter? :-) :-) Dave K8MN |
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#24
September 6th 04, 07:19 AM
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On 04 Sep 2004 02:41:02 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:
In article , Leo writes: On 03 Sep 2004 05:40:43 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote: In article , Leo writes: On 02 Sep 2004 04:18:56 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote: In article , Leo writes: On 01 Sep 2004 20:09:31 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote: snip The Notice is available at: http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/inter.../sf06456e.html Thank you for the link! Any Canadian radio amateurs care to comment on that? I'm not Canadian, but I think it fails to follw the KISS principle. They want to add an Intermediate licence to their Basic and Advanced. Why don't they just abolish the 'Plus' categories (i.e. plus Morse)? That would be much simpler. I'm not Canadian either as a "Carbo-American," but I think the "plus" category is a sop to the existing Canadian mighty morsemen. Canada must have its share of olde-fahrt hamme morsemen and those must be "satisfied." I am - and fully agree with your observation that there are -um-a fair number of 'old school' amateurs up here, who do not believe in the abolishment of the Code Test (approximately a third of the respondents to the RAC survey on this subject). The RAC proposal attempts to meet the needs of both the "Pro Morse" and "No Morse" factions of the hobby - in quite an interesting way. Both sides win - either path leads to a full HF-access Amateur license. Now dat's a typically Canadian solution, eh? I'm not familiar with that sort of "typicalness." Been in here in this ultra-conservative retro-tech newsgroup too much. :-) Hmmm - not good for a guy like you, living in one of the more free thinking areas of the country.... Oh, there's plenty of independent thinking going on here, trying to look at all sides to see which one seems best. That I learned from design work...and trying to do a good job. (an aside ... I have relatives in Redondo Beach - spent a few happy summers there when I was a teenager learning Californian philosophy.... and a fair bit of anatomy too, on the beach....wow! Southern California was the birthplace of the space shuttle and the Bikini...not to mention lots of good airplanes along the way. The beach cities down here (Redondo, Hermosa, etc., etc.) DO have some very nice views of the, er, ocean... :-) What........ocean? ...while driving along the Pacific Coast Highway. Safety first, fun and games afterwards. :-) I did see an ocean all the way downf the PCH - damn shame that it isn't more prominent at the beach! (naaaah, maybe not! 8*p I would say instead it is a GOOD COMPROMISE and to the credit of the Radio Amateurs of Canada and Industry Canada. I believe that the proposal is a good one - inasmuch as it provides access to HF without the requirement of Morse testing. It does recommend that Morse testing be made available should the applicant desire it - I have no problem with that. Status quo - or not. Your choice. That's fair and equitable in my viewpoint. Mighty macho morsemen will disagree and ignite (again) Flame Wars instead of simple bonfires. That would be typical......unfortunately. Realistically, this hobby has more than enough breadth to accomodate the needs of both the Morse and No Morse proponents. That should be true but for the outraged ultra-conservatives. Too many of that group are anal-retentive in trying to keep the status quo. It recommends raising the pass marks on the exams - good idea, most believe that they are way too low right now (60% is a pass on both the Basic and Advanced tests currently). No issue there. That's good in my view. Mine too. The more knowledge, the better. Can't have enough knowledge. That's for sure! It is indeed a compromise intended to satisfy both the Morse and No Morse factions of the hobby - but it does so with considerably more elegance than the ARRL proposal, in my opinion. ARRL is not fully into this new millennium. :-) Some wonder if they ever made it into the last millennium... In some ways, only the first quarter of it..... Frankly, they seem too concerned with playing politics than guiding the hobby into the future. I see it as internal politics, trying to preserve what they have and who has it. The league DOES do some good work. The anti-BPL work is very good. BPL is a threat to ALL who use HF and should transcend any politics. True, and they have done a great job of publicizing the threat to HF and beyond that BPL poses. Not to the electronic industry although one editorial in Electronic Design News made a mention of their website. There hasn't been a lot of comment on BPL in the industry press. One reason may be that BPL doesn't offer that much in the way of possible new products to be designed and made...in comparison to any of the many wireless schemes which have gotten the PR. The through-the-AC-line schemes have shown up as NOT having acceptance in the market...quite possibly for the fact that so few actually work as advertised. What remains is the venerable X10 system and a couple copycats plus the new Black & Decker line for remote controlling, all operating at much lower bandwidth. For much of the rest of it, I see it as the league trying to survive. They have failed to gain as much as a quarter of all licensed U.S. amateurs as members over the last decade-plus. ARRL has filed U.S. federal income tax showing that they are a $12 million (in 2002) business. "Tax-exempt" status, yes, but a business nonetheless. Membership dues aren't enough to keep the buildings warmed, staff paid, electricity for the equipment bought. Their major monetary source is QST ad sales (to keep QST afloat) and PUBLISHING. If they lose that publishing arm they can kiss their much-heralded free services for members goo-bye. Many in Newington would be looking for new work. The RAC proposal to IC was based on an Internet survey which was open to all licensed Canadian amateurs (not just RAC members). The ARRL proposal seems to have been developed autonomously by the Directors, with little (if any) input from the Amateur community. No wonder everyone was surprised when it was filed! That's the thing...the entrenched "we know what's best for you (members) and everyone else" attitude. Many don't agree with that and haven't joined even if they can afford the small annual dues. The league got away with that for decades before the Internet went public in 1991. They did all the interfacing with the FCC, most of the lobbying, then promoted themselves as the Big Brother of all U.S. hams. They managed to convince a hard core of Believers who are outraged and ready to fight anyone who says the least little negative thing about the league. [witness some of its Believers in here] I have! I hope you meant that as "witnessing" not as a Believer...? I have indeed witnessed such behaviour amongst the true Desciples themselves - I do not, however, count myself amongst their ranks. ITo me, it's a hobby, not a religion - one does not need to believe all of the doctrine, or any of it for that matter, to join in. Just follow the law, and go for it! I'm in favour of it - and my comments to that effect have been filed with IC, as of today. Good on you! I have to agree with Hans Brakob in that our northern neighbor in Norse America is doing the right thing for their future. Modernization is long overdue. [excuse me...NORTH America...;-) ] heh.....that brought back memories of Leif The Lucky from grade school! Norsemen were the first European discoverers of North America. Yup - long before Columbus got lost and thought this was India! He should have bought that Garwin GPS handheld when he had the chance... :-) .....or stopped using his sextant as a telescope Settled in what is now Canada (New Foundland) for a while. Dunno why they left...maybe they objected to speaking French? ...they probably left because they couldn't find jobs (the unemployment rate in Newfie is a whopping 20% or so - WAY above the national average of just over 7%!) A definite NOT GOOD situation there. My sympathies with the workers not working. Mine too. Been there a few times myself (isn't Telecom grand!) - nothing worse than no job when you want to work! Been there, done that, courtesy of the "job security" in aerospace. Fortunately, there were lots of aerospace companies in southern California. Haven't been in many "employment insurance" lines, but once is enough. Amen. Industry Canada has much simpler regulations for their radio amateurs but accomplish the same thing in the hobby. Well said. The less regulations, the better the hobby! .....and the less I gotta remember.... Band limits and other technical necessities should be enough. Fully agreed. Up here, bandplans for the various operating modes are compiled by the RAC, and adhered to by gentlemen's agreement. It is absolutely legal to operate SSB on 7.100 MHz, or CW on 7.250 MHz, but it just isn't done! Peer pressure is the only enforcement tool required. There's a slightly different peer pressure active down here. :-) Has much to do with personality conflicts and self-righteousness, much less about actual radio technology. Yeah, I see that alright! ARRL is 90 years old and they have not had much turnover at Hq. That leads to "cronyism" in Hq and a resultant status-quo thinking which has contributed to their lack of getting new membership. St. Hiram hisself remained president since day one until he got too old to show up at the office. Dave Sumner is "executive president" and isn't votable out of office. While there is a BoD at the ARRL, the publications arm takes its direction direct from Hq staff. That leads to a concentration of who-runs-what to the Newington group despite all the self-promotion of "democratic principle" BoD "discussions." That publishing arm is a mighty strong venue for getting readers to think the way the Hq advisers say they should. Not that many publications left for radio amateurs down here. and just one here except for the bi-monthly RAC nagazine.......the other options are QST and CQ. What many of the league disciples fail to realize is that whatever gets published out of Newington is the decision of the editors, not some etheral "will of the ham community." Hq staff have the very final say-so on anything in print...and print with real ink on real paper doesn't disappear or get revised easily. That is Real Opinion Making Power! Didn't Pravda follow a similar 'open editorial concept' just a few short years ago? BTW, that electronic test that can run on any PC looked rather neat! Simple way to do it and the computer does most of the paperwork as well as keeping a record of it being done and when. It is pretty neat indeed! Free, too! Rack up some points for the RAC and IC. They deserve applause. Normally, one should be wary of free things from the Government.... Now, now... :-) Learning skills of long ago just to get a license in here and now is nowhere close to being progressive and just doesn't keep up with the times. Again, fully agreed. Especially since the rest of the world is moving towards the future - we would look pretty silly clinging steadfastly to the past. In amateur radio technology, the "outsiders," the designers and manufacturers (mostly off-shore to North America) are the ones doing it. Names like Icom, Yaesu, Kenwood, Panasonic (Matsu****a), JRC, etc., etc. etc...in HF, VHF, UHF, and now beginning to get into the microwave region. I chanced upon a 5.8 GHz cordless phone at Fry's Electronics (the huge consumer electronics supermarket chain of about a dozen in this corner of the U.S.). That's pushing into C band, something impossible to have on the consumer market with vacuum tubes. Full digital two-way, low-power radio with all the extra features of the L band cordless units. Affordable stuff. There are so many cellular telephone subscribers down here that our Census Bureau reports that one in three citizens has one. A little, almost minuature, two way radio working at the bottom of the microwave region! Newer models complete with little cameras and keyboards built in. Those extras may be fluff to many but they've all been crammed into that little tiny package. Not to mention that many of those units integrate several radically different cellular protocols seamlessly in that package - mine is AMPS 800 MHz analog, D-AMPS (TDMA) 800 MHz digital, and CDMA 1.9 GHz digital. All in a package that fits in your palm, and runs for a week on its dinky Li-ion battery. And free, with a three-year cell company contract! Unbelievable technology, compared to just a few years ago. Absolutely phenomenal compared to 20 years ago. Agreed. But... Several of the Believers in here will cuss at cell phones because they aren't "real" radios one puts on a nice desk in the "shack" in prominent view. Those same Believers will trashmouth VHF and above the same way...HTs are called "the shack on the belt." :-) Digital devices, in particular the family called microcontrollers, made all of that possible in such small size. I doubt there is any "good" transceiver for HF designed and made in the last decade that doesn't have a microcontroller as the basic control and display handler, the one that makes 10 Hz increment accurate tuning possible by making the internal DDS control words. I'm still incredulous at the amazing leaps forward in technology since I first began working (way back when tubes were king). Getting equipment to work reliably at high UHF was an accomplishment worthy of much praise and doing the same in the microwave region was almost a miracle. Now its become an accomplished fact. Way back when of the 50s, only the well-heeled hams could afford the near-precisely tuneable Collins rigs with their "PTOs" that could find their way to better than the nearest Kilocycle, receive or transmit. All others were stuck with approximations using squint-read dials and "bandspread" tuning set with the aid of a 100 KHz crystal "calibrator." Now anyone can get a direct digital readout down to 10 Hz of the correct frequency. No sweaty-dah. Absolutely - my car radio has far better frequency stability than most of the test equipment that I operated back in the 70s. No one seems to think of the temperature extremes that an auto or other vehicle goes through. :-) Especially up here! Some cities, like Winnipeg, have parkingmeters with elecreical outletsbuilt in, to plug the engine block heater into. The outlet is energized only while the meter is active - money runs out, outlet goes off, and engine begins to rapidly chill down to ambient temp - which in Winnipeg in February go as low as -50 degrees F or so. The bottom line: pay the meter, or your car ain't lokely to start when you get back to it! The Phase Locked Loop made it possible and digital devices makes the PLL practical. The first PLL was done in France in 1932. It wasn't until the mid 1960s that they started appearing in radio communications equipment...starting in low microwave oscillator units using samplers to get the uWv into the loop. That same PLL principle made the HP Vector Voltmeter possible and the big line of self-calibrateable test systems that demand accurate tuning returns to perform computer-controlled testing and self-calibration. Frequency counters are digital instruments. Those have shrunk to ridiculously small sizes in marrying a microcontroller to an LCD display backlit by LEDs, using a maximum of four ICs. AADE has a fine line of those little guys, well worth it to revitalize an old mechanical dial read-out rig. I have one of the AADE kits - installed on an old Realistic DX-150B. Works perfectly - a stable and accurate digital readout. Easy to interface to the set too! Considering that the dial calibration was pretty crappy on that set, and resisted every effort to tweak the adjustments to fix that adequately, the freq readout masi it a (relatively) useful piece of equipment again. The kids DX with it sometimes, even still,,,,,,, It used to be that tuning up a tube transmitter actually took some finesse and a little experience to do. Now the transistor PAs don't need it and have automatic protection in case the VSWR gets too high. Need to match to a "funny" antenna? No sweat, there's several automatic-tuning tuners on the market, takes the worry out of getting as much as possible into the antenna and out to the world. Push-button ease. I still use my old Heathkit SB-400 SSB tube transmitter on the air - with the antenna tuner, it's a handful to tune up, compared to the newer rigs. But, if I actually manage to raise someone with it, it's a minor miracle, and I feel much more a part of the process than if I simply turned the tuning knob on a more modern unit. Plus, I bought it DOA and completely overhauled it back to life - as a result, I'm very familiar with the inner workings of the thing. My own personal contribution to the past, I suppose.....that, or I'm too cheap to buy a new rig - or both There's nostalgia and then there's nostalgia. :-) Heh! A long time ago I did those "tune-ups" the old fashioned way for a couple years. Bloody nuisance when there's three dozen big transmitters under your care and NONE of the is taken down out of circuit unless some high rank says so. :-) I can't see why anyone wants to trashmouth automatic antenna tuners which would reduce the amount of knob-twisting to a minimum. Solid-state PAs of today don't need any special knob-twisting...and they have built-in coupler sensing to tell the user if the VSWR is getting dangerous to the final. 73, Leo PS - WTF is a "Carbo-American"? - never heard that one before! Came from a couple of comic strips running in the L.A. Times as well as elsewhere. Backlash to the "Adkins Diet" craze. :-) [or "Atkins Diet" or whatever..."zero carbohydrates"] Got it - we have been bombarded by the "Adkins" diet craze up here too. It's nothing that a Big Mac and a couple of beers won't fix I'm a supporter of Krispy Kreme myself. :-) Yup, we have them here too - good stuff! Too good, in fact.... heh heh heh...I'm waiting for one of my "fan club" to make more trashmouth about that... :-) Won't be long now, I'll bet! Heh. This reminds me of the story of Micro Henry, who took Millie Amp for a ride on his Mega Cycle - ah, the good old college days..... Old story, really, I think it goes back as far as WW2 days. I believe that - my experience with it only goes back to 1975! I managed to locate this classic work of electrical prose at the following site: CAUTION: Not for the faint of heart or pathologically moralistic reader ......you know who you are Title: "The Sex Life Of An Electron" http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStre...do/goodies.htm "The Physicists Party" isn't too bad either What will the "children" think of that? :-) Let's find out! Besides, I warned him not to look! ;p 73, Leo |
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#26
September 7th 04, 03:33 PM
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(Quitefine) wrote in message ...
In article , (Len Over 21) writes: Any Canadian radio amateurs care to comment on that? Why do you specify only "Canadian radio amateurs"? What about Canadians who are not radio amateurs? I beleive that the same rules apply as in the USA. Non-amateur may have an opinion, but that opinion is uninformed and is readily discarded by the amateur elite. |
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#27
September 7th 04, 03:59 PM
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Subject: Canadian No Code Proposal Open For Comment
From: (William) Date: 9/7/2004 8:33 AM Central Standard Time Message-id: (Quitefine) wrote in message ... In article , (Len Over 21) writes: Any Canadian radio amateurs care to comment on that? Why do you specify only "Canadian radio amateurs"? What about Canadians who are not radio amateurs? I beleive that the same rules apply as in the USA. Non-amateur may have an opinion, but that opinion is uninformed and is readily discarded by the amateur elite. There is no "amateur elite", unless, of course, you refer to folks like W1RFI, K1EA, etc etc. And NO opinons are "readily discarded", Brain...even yours. But antagaonistic, spiteful insults are. Your bunk buddy had to push a lot of buttons and hurl a lot of insults to get himself to where he is today...scorned and dismissed by anyone who has even the least amount of awareness of the factual circumstances of what the Amateur Radio service is, what it has accomplished in the past and where it's going in the future. You're not far behind, but I think folks view you more as the Organ Grinder's monkey...jumping when you hear your master's music play. Steve, K4YZ |
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#28
September 7th 04, 09:19 PM
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In article ,
(William) writes: (Quitefine) wrote in message ... In article , (Len Over 21) writes: Any Canadian radio amateurs care to comment on that? Why do you specify only "Canadian radio amateurs"? What about Canadians who are not radio amateurs? I beleive that the same rules apply as in the USA. Non-amateur may have an opinion, but that opinion is uninformed and is readily discarded by the amateur elite. Jimmie Who is trolling with that "message," Brian. Canada is a nation of democratic principles. A good neighbor. Their amateur radio is not "ruled" by straight-laced olde-tymers of radiotelegraphy. That irks the very non-independent thinking Believers who only venerate the past and vilify those harboring heretical independent thought. shrug |
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#29
September 7th 04, 09:19 PM
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In article , Leo
writes: On 04 Sep 2004 02:41:02 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote: In article , Leo writes: On 03 Sep 2004 05:40:43 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote: In article , Leo writes: On 02 Sep 2004 04:18:56 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote: In article , Leo writes: On 01 Sep 2004 20:09:31 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote: The RAC proposal to IC was based on an Internet survey which was open to all licensed Canadian amateurs (not just RAC members). The ARRL proposal seems to have been developed autonomously by the Directors, with little (if any) input from the Amateur community. No wonder everyone was surprised when it was filed! That's the thing...the entrenched "we know what's best for you (members) and everyone else" attitude. Many don't agree with that and haven't joined even if they can afford the small annual dues. The league got away with that for decades before the Internet went public in 1991. They did all the interfacing with the FCC, most of the lobbying, then promoted themselves as the Big Brother of all U.S. hams. They managed to convince a hard core of Believers who are outraged and ready to fight anyone who says the least little negative thing about the league. [witness some of its Believers in here] I have! I hope you meant that as "witnessing" not as a Believer...? I have indeed witnessed such behaviour amongst the true Desciples themselves - I do not, however, count myself amongst their ranks. ITo me, it's a hobby, not a religion - one does not need to believe all of the doctrine, or any of it for that matter, to join in. Just follow the law, and go for it! That sounds eminently reasonable...except some do not follow such opinions. :-) I'm in favour of it - and my comments to that effect have been filed with IC, as of today. Good on you! I have to agree with Hans Brakob in that our northern neighbor in Norse America is doing the right thing for their future. Modernization is long overdue. [excuse me...NORTH America...;-) ] heh.....that brought back memories of Leif The Lucky from grade school! Norsemen were the first European discoverers of North America. Yup - long before Columbus got lost and thought this was India! He should have bought that Garwin GPS handheld when he had the chance... :-) .....or stopped using his sextant as a telescope Settled in what is now Canada (New Foundland) for a while. Dunno why they left...maybe they objected to speaking French? ...they probably left because they couldn't find jobs (the unemployment rate in Newfie is a whopping 20% or so - WAY above the national average of just over 7%!) A definite NOT GOOD situation there. My sympathies with the workers not working. Mine too. Been there a few times myself (isn't Telecom grand!) - nothing worse than no job when you want to work! Been there, done that, courtesy of the "job security" in aerospace. Fortunately, there were lots of aerospace companies in southern California. Haven't been in many "employment insurance" lines, but once is enough. Amen. As an aside, the enmity between Lockheed Aircraft and the state of California (state winning) resulted in a HUGE shopping center in Burbank built on what had been their main production complex. (Lockheed moved out, sold all their holdings). The electronics part of the aerospace industry here migrated towards south and northwest. Some of those going south emulated Silicon Valley and began semiconductor production...fairly sizeable quantities too. ARRL is 90 years old and they have not had much turnover at Hq. That leads to "cronyism" in Hq and a resultant status-quo thinking which has contributed to their lack of getting new membership. St. Hiram hisself remained president since day one until he got too old to show up at the office. Dave Sumner is "executive president" and isn't votable out of office. While there is a BoD at the ARRL, the publications arm takes its direction direct from Hq staff. That leads to a concentration of who-runs-what to the Newington group despite all the self-promotion of "democratic principle" BoD "discussions." That publishing arm is a mighty strong venue for getting readers to think the way the Hq advisers say they should. Not that many publications left for radio amateurs down here. and just one here except for the bi-monthly RAC nagazine.......the other options are QST and CQ. Nothing from the RSGB? :-) Concentration of information dissemination is a very sharp two- edged sword. The bad edge is that minimalization of venues is a wonderful gift for those who would wish to dictate the proper way to think and act. Those who publish periodicals control everything in those publications. Everything. Especially up here! Some cities, like Winnipeg, have parkingmeters with elecreical outletsbuilt in, to plug the engine block heater into. The outlet is energized only while the meter is active - money runs out, outlet goes off, and engine begins to rapidly chill down to ambient temp - which in Winnipeg in February go as low as -50 degrees F or so. The bottom line: pay the meter, or your car ain't lokely to start when you get back to it! :-( I have put such cold-weather thoughts out of my mind a long time ago, moving to the sunbelt in late 1956. Northern Illinois temps aren't as cold as farther north but they were cold enough. If I want freezing temperatures on equipment, I just go down to the lab and pop the door to the Tenney chamber, adjust the dials, and viola, "instant polar temperatures!" :-) I have one of the AADE kits - installed on an old Realistic DX-150B. Works perfectly - a stable and accurate digital readout. Easy to interface to the set too! Considering that the dial calibration was pretty crappy on that set, and resisted every effort to tweak the adjustments to fix that adequately, the freq readout masi it a (relatively) useful piece of equipment again. The kids DX with it sometimes, even still,,,,,,, Electronic etymology dept.: AADE isn't the first such application of a microprocessor adapted as a frequency counter. Those go back about 8 years to the UK and a non-ham electronic hobbyist, according to an Internet search. AADE is the big maker-seller now and does a very credible job at a very affordable price for frequency accuracy. Easy to order for most of the post-WW2 antiques. :-) It's also a credit to Microchip Inc. and their extremely affordable microcontroller line (dozens of models) of "PIC" ICs. Microchip gives away their development software and all a hobbyist has to do is buy the simple development hardware. The rest is up to the hobbyist who has to learn a different "code," that of assembler instructions and putting them in the proper order to accomplish a function. A big and growing electronic hobby is robotics. Fun thing and gets down deep to electronics guts. [I'm not into that but some of their ideas are interesting and useful] Microchip is vying with Atmel on micros there. Both makers also were used in "radio clocks" a few years ago, once a thing only for hobbyists until the off-shore consumer market producers (more than 30 brands now) put $20 and $30 [US] radio clocks on the store shelves. Microcontrollers do all the "heavy" work of filtering (via DSP), decoding of WWVB one- minute data, arithmetic and date-keeping. Most are very low-power, run on a couple dry cells for over a year. Months back I heard one ham cussing up a storm on how radio clocks aren't "real radio!" Operate on 60 KHz, not "real radio frequencies," don't use "real radio circuits" and, worse, "don't use real code at 20 WPM, just some #$%^@@!! (hack, ptui) data at one bit per second!" :-) He was working up a real case of mouth frothing on the subject before he got sidetracked to another anger- venting discussion. USA still doesn't have any LF ham bands, yet other countries do. ARRL apparently doesn't want to get involved in computer code, only morse code. Their foray into PC-compatible circuit analysis went DEFUNCT when "Radio Designer" selling was stopped. Tsk. [they couldn't call it a SPICE program which it was, but then they use different names for circuits and things that the rest of the electronics industry uses...SPICE core is absolutely free for anyone to use] I still use my old Heathkit SB-400 SSB tube transmitter on the air - with the antenna tuner, it's a handful to tune up, compared to the newer rigs. But, if I actually manage to raise someone with it, it's a minor miracle, and I feel much more a part of the process than if I simply turned the tuning knob on a more modern unit. Plus, I bought it DOA and completely overhauled it back to life - as a result, I'm very familiar with the inner workings of the thing. My own personal contribution to the past, I suppose.....that, or I'm too cheap to buy a new rig - or both There's nostalgia and then there's nostalgia. :-) Heh! Ben Tongue, co-founder of the Blonder-Tongue CATV company, found a niche hobby in (of all things) "crystal sets." In his pages on the Blonder-Tongue website he's done SPICE analysis on various ways to hook up that awfully complicated, non-active- device crystal receiver. :-) heh heh heh...I'm waiting for one of my "fan club" to make more trashmouth about that... :-) Won't be long now, I'll bet! Didn't take them but a short time over our holiday weekend. :-) I was gone but the "fans" were busy, busy, busy making me into some radioactive Antichrist. :-) Heh. This reminds me of the story of Micro Henry, who took Millie Amp for a ride on his Mega Cycle - ah, the good old college days..... Old story, really, I think it goes back as far as WW2 days. I believe that - my experience with it only goes back to 1975! A beat-up mimeographed copy was circulating around the Fort Monmouth Signal School back in 1952. Might have been a draft version from even earlier times. :-) No xerography machines back then. U.S. military made copies by first "cutting stencils" for mimeographing. Paper was acidic and didn't last more than 30 years or so before crumbling in open air. More better was the paper roll from teleprinters with use-once flimsy carbon paper. Paper tape lasted longest of all, could repro exactly via a p-tape reading teleprinter. Now we can get quality paper cheap, use inkjet printers connected to computers and turn out camera-ready copy from one of several WYSIWYG text editors...even spell-checked if someone bothered to switch that in. :-) There's all sorts of audio range recorders, from open-reel mag tape to limited-time all-digital electronic memo-pad things. VHS videotape has been adapted to recording multi-megabytes of data, even archiving of PC files. But...some radio amateurs insist and insist and insist that ALL new radio amateurs MUST learn morse code to get that license. Otherwise they "aren't real amateurs." :-) |
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#30
September 7th 04, 10:13 PM
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(Steve Robeson K4CAP) wrote in message ...
Subject: Canadian No Code Proposal Open For Comment From: (William) Date: 9/7/2004 8:33 AM Central Standard Time Message-id: (Quitefine) wrote in message ... In article , (Len Over 21) writes: Any Canadian radio amateurs care to comment on that? Why do you specify only "Canadian radio amateurs"? What about Canadians who are not radio amateurs? I beleive that the same rules apply as in the USA. Non-amateur may have an opinion, but that opinion is uninformed and is readily discarded by the amateur elite. There is no "amateur elite", You are right. But there are those who think they are elite. unless, of course, you refer to folks like W1RFI, K1EA, etc etc. And there are those who think others are elite. And NO opinons are "readily discarded", Brain...even yours. You trample them first. But antagaonistic, spiteful insults are. You are preaching about antag[a]onistic and spiteful remarks? Antag[a]onistic and spiteful remarks define your RRAP career, sprinkled with a large dose of insanity. Your bunk buddy I have no bunk buddy. had to push a lot of buttons and hurl a lot of insults to get himself to where he is today...scorned and dismissed by anyone who has even the least amount of awareness of the factual circumstances of what the Amateur Radio service is, what it has accomplished in the past and where it's going in the future. Factual circumstances like, "Sorry Hans, MARS IS Amateur Radio!" Hi, Hi! You're not far behind, but I think folks view you more as the Organ Grinder's monkey...jumping when you hear your master's music play. Steve, K4YZ You are certainly no one's master, not even of yourself. Best of Luck. |
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