Hmmm, construct a HERF... that'll keep the neighbors busy...

Warmest regards,
John

"Landshark" wrote in message
...

"Jim Hampton" wrote in message
...

I
hope they enjoy my tunes:

LOL!!!, the 60's 70 are over big guy


1) Washington Post March
2) Anchors aweigh
3) The Thunderer
4) The Stars and Stripes Forever (my favorite)

I've got others on CDs. From all of the services. Funny, but I have
a
feeling that they will be clamoring for "regulation" all of a sudden
)


With all due regards from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA

Oh Yeah................ Go to hear from You Jim.

Landshark


Hello, Sharkie

My bad. I meant 700 watt system - not something from the 70s LOL. All
Bose
speakers. A couple hundred watts on the bass alone (and it does shake,
although I keep the volume down).

Good to hear from you too. I'm not really mad, just disappointed that
folks
don't understand the need for regulation. I have a dog and she stays in
the
house for the most part. When I have her out, if she barks more than a
few
times, I bring her in. The neighbors don't need to hear a dog barking
for
20 minutes or more.

I know the feeling. I also know, neighbors should work things out rather
than call the police over such trivial things.

Same thing with the stereo system.

Heck, I've made a mistake in the past. Had a party with the Hammond
turned
up pretty well (as well as the Leslies) and the cops showed up. I
apologized and shut it off. Never done that since (and that was 25 years
ago). No biggie; anyone can make a mistake.

Know the feeling I had my cousins out last year, Thursday night and was
out in my backyard 2 minutes past 10, started heading into the house and
they came a running out and said the music was keeping their kid awake.
Went over the next morning, Six pack & bottle of wine in hand as an
apology, the wife says "oh you were keeping me awake". I mean, it's not
like I do this but once every 3 years, show a little patience., I do when
they start firing off fireworks into the air, midweek after
10pm.



73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA



Landshark


--
Kindness is the language which the deaf
can hear and the blind can see.

John Smith wrote:
By the ARRL own statistics, ham radio is dying

Well, shrinking, anyway. The total number of US hams is down slightly
from the peak of a few years ago, while the total US population
continues to grow.

But I would note that the shrinkage occurred *after* the
April 2000 reductions in both Morse Code and written
testing for all available license classes. IOW, making
the licenses easier to get in 2000 did not result in
sustained growth.

Looking further back, examine the growth from 1990 or 1991 to
2000. (1990 is when medical waivers made it possible to get
any amateur license with a 5 wpm test, and 1991 is when the
Technician lost its code test. Then compare the growth in that
9 year period to the growth in an equal period of time before
1990 or 1991. You'll find that the overall increase in the '80s
was *greater* than in the '90s.

73 de Jim, N2EY

wrote


But I would note that the shrinkage occurred *after* the
April 2000 reductions in both Morse Code and written
testing for all available license classes. IOW, making
the licenses easier to get in 2000 did not result in
sustained growth.


Two questions:

1) Is this shrinkage due to...
a. Less new applicants
b. Increased attrition

2) Are easier tests the cause of the shrinkage...
a. Yes
b. No

dit dit
(Note Farnsworth spacing)

de Hans, K0HB

wrote:

One possible explanation is that the real problem
is publicity and image, not license requirements.

If people don't know what ham radio is, the license
requirements have no effect on them.

Ham radio just isn't very appealing to the current generation. There are
too many other things to compete, computers, the Internet, vidoe games.
Kids had rather be skilled at playing the latest video game than have
technical skills in some outdated (to them) mode of communication. They
had much rather build a computer than a radio. Who needs a ham radio
station to talk to someone in another state or even in another country,
just whip out the cell phone. Almost every teenager now has one.

It is obvious there is a decline in interest in amateur radio, I think the
reasons are many, since the gear is constructed for such a small "nitch" of
users--the equip is expensive--this is only one more reason for the decline.

I have never heard anyone complain the exams were too difficult (of course,
I am mainly around college age kids who go for a license), it is always the
code--they hate it--some can be pushed to complete the code to get the
license--after, they simply never use the code again...most of these young
fellows are interested in GHz freqs and above...and how a computer can be
interfaced with the radio...

Warmest regards,
John

wrote in message
oups.com...
John Smith wrote:
By the ARRL own statistics, ham radio is dying

Well, shrinking, anyway. The total number of US hams is down slightly
from the peak of a few years ago, while the total US population
continues to grow.

But I would note that the shrinkage occurred *after* the
April 2000 reductions in both Morse Code and written
testing for all available license classes. IOW, making
the licenses easier to get in 2000 did not result in
sustained growth.

Looking further back, examine the growth from 1990 or 1991 to
2000. (1990 is when medical waivers made it possible to get
any amateur license with a 5 wpm test, and 1991 is when the
Technician lost its code test. Then compare the growth in that
9 year period to the growth in an equal period of time before
1990 or 1991. You'll find that the overall increase in the '80s
was *greater* than in the '90s.

73 de Jim, N2EY

On Tue, 24 May 2005 17:22:40 -0700, "John Smith"
wrote:


"Steveo" wrote in message
...
"John Smith" wrote:
Hmmm, I could record a long QSO on cw and play it for the truckers...
give 'em something to appreciate... grin

So the hams didn't feel left, could record the truckers and play that for
them... evil'er grin

Warmest regards,
John

"Steveo" wrote in message
...
Cmd Buzz Corey wrote:
John Smith wrote:
Dan:

You will never find me using cw...

Well, you don't need it on CB.

It's been done, JJ.






You can eat **** and die too for all I care, you top posting freak.


Steveo:

You name is almost as cute as a girls, you sound gay... there is nothing
wrong with gay people yanno, but better if you stay with your own kind...
grin

Top posters bother gays yanno...

Warmest regards,
John

Could be worse, after all your name could be Brett???
Now that would really suck..

K=D8HB wrote:
wrote

But I would note that the shrinkage occurred *after* the
April 2000 reductions in both Morse Code and written
testing for all available license classes. IOW, making
the licenses easier to get in 2000 did not result in
sustained growth.

Two questions:

1) Is this shrinkage due to...
a. Less new applicants
b. Increased attrition

From what I can see at hamdata.com and AH0A.org, it seems to
me that the number of new hams has been slowly increasing
since at least 1997 (which is as far back as AH0A.org goes)
but attrition has been rising even faster.

How much of the attrition increase is due to "involuntary"
causes (SKs, hams in nursing homes, etc.) vs. "voluntary"
causes (loss of interest) is a matter of pure speculation.
I don't have good data on that one way or the other.

It does seem to me, however, that when a survey says 22% of
recently-licensed new hams interviewed have *never* set up
their own station and gotten on the air with it, something's
amiss in the "interest" department.

We sometimes see statistics about the "average age of US
hams today is XX" and predictions of doom for the future
as today's hams become SKs. What we don't see are statistics
on how the "average age" was computed (mean? median? mode?)
nor the age distribution (bell curve? exponential?). Nor
do we see stats on what the "average age" was 10, 20, 30
years ago.

Looking around at club meetings and hamfests isn't a good
sample because a lot of us don't go to those things very
often.

2) Are easier tests the cause of the shrinkage...
a. Yes
b. No

No good way to tell. One thing is certain: The test
reductions have not resulted in a flood of new hams
compared to before the test reductions.

One possible explanation is that the real problem
is publicity and image, not license requirements.

If people don't know what ham radio is, the license
requirements have no effect on them.

Another factor is that if the license requirements
are made "too easy", what you may have are some folks who
have a license but no station because it's "too
difficult" for them to set one up. Then they forget
about ham radio and go on to something else.

---

One thing I remember clearly from my newcomer days
as a 12-13 year old is that once I found out what
amateur radio was, and how to get started, the license
requirements were "not a problem". They were simply
a challenge. If there had not been a Novice license,
I simply would have gone for General right out of the
box.

A lot of the kids I knew then, and know now, are the
same way when they are interested in something.

73 de Jim, N2EY

Mike Coslo wrote:
wrote:
Michael Coslo wrote:

Cmd Buzz Corey wrote:

John Smith wrote:

... the "anateur exams" are certainly no hinderence, they always
have
been as simple as pie--a college grad trained in the art of "test
taking" could study for a day and pass the most challenging


I think you need to go back and look at the early exams. There was
a time when an applicant was required to actually draw a schematic of
various circuits and explaine how they worked.

Is that supposed to be hard?


Depends on the person. For someone who knows a little radio theory and
the regulations of the amateur radio service, none of the tests were
very hard.

Heck, I passed the old General and Advanced class tests in 1968 - at
the age of 14. That was the summer between 8th and 9th grade for me. No
big deal, there were younger hams than me with Extras back then.

The difference between then and now is the test *method* more than the
content.

And even after the exams
became multiple choice type,


(about 1960 for the General)


one had to know the material to get the
correct answer as the answers to the acutal questions were not
available.

Yeah. You'll find that question pool bugaboo in a lot of fields
thesedays, including fields where if a person makes a mistake because of
not knowing the material, lives may be lost.


Good or bad, I don't think FCC will go back to the old way.

Nope.

So it's really immaterial what the old exams were like, other than to
point out the differences. Newer hams have no choice in the matter -
they can't take the old tests even if they wanted to.

One more difference about the old tests, though: Judging by the
study guides, the old tests focused on a few subject areas in depth,
while the new tests cover more subject areas but in much less detail.

There were study guides with sample questions, but no
questions pools with the exact answer available for memorization.

Now if you want *really* hard, make it no study guide, no question
pool, and the applicant has to do all the learning research with NO
idea of what is on the test! 8^)


The old study guides were essay-type Q&A that outlined the general area
of knowledge. One question could cover a *lot* of ground. The old Extra
study guide was as much as 279 questions at one point.


If you
did not know the theory, then you probably weren't going to pass.
Again john smith knows not of what he speaks.

I took the tests from the question pools. For me, they were all
pretty easy. They were not easy because of the question pools. They were
easy because they were fairly basic material.


But you had seen the exact Q&A before, right?

Weell, the key word is "exact". I noticed that when I took my Extra
exam, many of the answers appeared in a different order than they were
in the question pool. I came away convinced that the person who
memorized the question pool was actually doing things the hard way.

The way most people would set out to "memorize" the Q&A is to simply
learn to associate the right answer with the question by any means
possible. You don't need a verbatim memorization nor any info about the
distractors.

That's a lot different than actually understanding the material.

For the Extra, I spent a week taking the on-line tests. Questions
that I knew the answer to, I got right of course.

Those that I got wrong earned me a trip to the books or online to
find out why I got it wrong. By the time I was finished, I aced the test
just about every time on line, and then in the actual test.

And I knew the material.

Elapsed time, one week.


For you.

Absolutely.

But I bet you had more than a little electrical/radio knowledge before
you ever looked at a ham radio study guide.

Yup. I think that my level of expertise was just a little skewed. I got
sidelined onto computers fairly early in the 1970's. Then I worked
mostly in digital, then changed careers, going into photography,
videography, and 3-d animation (waaayy too many hats to wear, but
whatever) But I did have a good bit of electrical experience

So you knew most of the material already! And what you didn't know was
more of
an extension to your existing knowledge base in the electricity area,
rather
than a completely new field.

Now the Morse code was another thing entirely. That was hard.

Besides your auditory situation, it was hard for another reason: It was
new,
and did not represent an extension of your existing knowledge base the
way
learning some more electronic/radio theory did.

But then I'm just a dum nickel extra! ;^)

I bet it says the same thing on your license as it does on mine. With
no mention of dumb or nickles, Mike.

Each of us met the requirements in force at the time of being licensed.
That the requirements changed over time isn't usually due to the people taking
the new tests.

Yup. My comment was mostly sarcasm. The only way that anyone knows my
"vintage" is by my callsign

Sort of. I know hams with 2x3 callsigns who have been Extras for 30+
years. They
just never went for a vanity call.

Looking down on somebody today because they didn't take the same tests
you took years ago is kind of like getting mad at someone who paid less
for a VCR last week than you paid 20 years ago....

HAR!

But isn't that true?

Back in 1997 I paid over $2k for a new Dell system. 200 MHz 32 MB
Pentium II, 17" Trinitron monitor, HP 820 printer, etc. Today you
couldn't get $50 for it (if you
could even find someone to buy it!) - in part because for $500 you
could buy a new Dell system that was an order of magnitude more
computer in almost every way.

Should I be mad at the person who spends $500 today because s/he got a
new Dell
for 1/4 what I paid 8 years ago?

73 de Jim, N2EY

Cmd Buzz Corey wrote:

Mike Coslo wrote:

Cmd Buzz Corey wrote:

Can you draw the schematic for a push-pull RF amplifier using link
coupling and explain how it works? Can you draw an AM transmitter
using Heising modulation and explain how it works?



Given a little bit of studying, yes.


Ah, there is the key, "studying", not just memorizing. Once you study it
and know it, it isn't hard.

I studied for my extra test.

A person would have to be an idiot to memorize *especially* the Extra
test. You have some 800 questions to memorize. Not real smart to
memorize that many questions for all that appear on the actual test.

Especially when the actual test answers are juggled from the pool answers.


- Mike KB3EIA -

Cmd Buzz Corey wrote:
wrote:

One possible explanation is that the real problem
is publicity and image, not license requirements.

If people don't know what ham radio is, the license
requirements have no effect on them.

Ham radio just isn't very appealing to the current generation. There are
too many other things to compete, computers, the Internet, vidoe games.
Kids had rather be skilled at playing the latest video game than have
technical skills in some outdated (to them) mode of communication. They
had much rather build a computer than a radio. Who needs a ham radio
station to talk to someone in another state or even in another country,
just whip out the cell phone. Almost every teenager now has one.

IAWTP.