QTH.COM Swap Chat

Have you ever took time to closely look at ham shack pictures that appear with many call sign look-ups?
Amateur radio today has digressed into appliance operators twisting fancy dials, while watching numbers flip around.
I recently decided to give up my home brewing hobby for several reasons, most of which are medically related. When I attempted to past some parts onto a younger amateur, via the ham boards like QTH, I was greeted by emails of very degrading comments regarding my desire to get a fair price for my items.
I can remember back when I first started building radio receivers in the 50's when parts were hard to come by, and money to buy them even harder. I often went to the junk yard and salvaged parts from old discarded radios.
But all that has changed, very few amateurs are actually building their gear. Electronics today has been reduced to a "play and throw away" mind set.
Many of today's amateurs study test guide books, and memorize information to pass an exam for a higher license class. In the days of past, you didn't need to study books, you were living and doing what you needed to know for advancement.
Well, its time for me to get my slippers on and a cozy blanket, and take my memories of the past lingering in my mind, and settle into la la land.

Happy Trials to all my amateur friends of the past,

73,
Tom, N8PQB

WHAT ABOUT HAM FRIENDS IN THE FUTURE????
THERE SOME GOOD NEWBIES OUT THERE THAT
CAN ADD GREATLY TO HAM AS A WHOLE.
YOUR RESPONCE RE: NEW HAMS GIVES ME A FEELING,
THAT YOU HAVE "OCULAR RECTITICE" I HOPE IT CURES
QUICKLY FOR YOU.
TAKE CARE AND GOOD BLESS.
RUSS==KC2RKO
BTW THIS IS A NEWBIE W/GENERAL.

I, too, entered the ham hobby in the late 50's. My first receiver was an old shortwave set that was tossed out by a relative and salvaged. Then came the a Hallicrafters S-38. Boy we were cooking with gas now! I built my first transmitter, a one tube one crystal affair with about two watts out put. This sounds familiar to all the newbies of the 50'. I was 15 years old.

At about that same time. there was a technological leap that changed the hobby and the world forever, the introduction of the transistor. This dealt the death knell to the boat anchors we had learned to love.

From the transistor grew the IC chip; then the LS IC chip, then SM components. Soon follow another major leap in technology, the high speed solid state computer.

These rapid advances also expanded the hobby greatly. Radio equipment became smaller, cheaper, and more reliable. Facets of the hobby increased almost geometrically with the addition of embedded computers, automated communications equipment, new digital modes, space communications, better antenna designs, expanded radio spectrum and ham created communications software and protocols.

The world I had known in the 50's dissapeared. What was the main stay of hamming took a back seat to completely new significantly expanded hobby with exciting new activities and skills.

Some followed the flow from the old to the new technologies, got involved, learned to program computers, learned how to work on "high tech" gear and found themselves as inthralled with the hobby as I was in the 50's.

Some didn't and for what ever reason, allowed themselves to fall behind in technical skills and to loose contact with that was going on at the cutting edge or our hobby. It doesn't make them bad. Sadly, it just means they have lost something precious--the thrill of it all.

K4ICL