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Attitude??

Posted by jferg977 on May 10, 2009; 12:26am
URL: http://elecraft.85.s1.nabble.com/Attitude-tp2852039.html


Well, gosh.  I thought all this was about people like  me.

3 years ago I decided we wanted email on our boat while in the  islands.  
To me this meant HAM.  Getting the equipment, setting up the  boat, trying to
learn the stuff and the 5 wpm looked pretty daunting from the  outside.  
What if we spent the $2k ++ and it didn’t work, or I couldn’t  pass the test?
 

Enter Elecraft and the K2 – I read the QST  review.  So I started to study.
 After 6 months I was pretty sure I  could pass the written – but not the
code.  I bought HAM University for the  code and after a year took tech, gen,
and code on one day and  passed.

I bought the kits to build k2/100 and kat100 with the nb,  ssb, and kaf2.  
I built the noise blanker first because it had a torroid  and I’d been
assured that winding them was awful.  It went ok so I built  the rest of the
stuff and IT WORKED although there was some chimping with the  marine-vhf
microphone I’d modified to use with it.

The hardest  thing to resolve was how to do the antenna and rf grounding on
the boat.   If you haven’t looked, you wouldn’t believe the nonsense on
this subject that is  available on the web.  I picked the system that seemed
easiest and whose  recommendation was most literate (and funny) of the many I
found. I lucked  out.  It too worked.  Then I found out what a Pactor cost
and decided  to forget about the email.

A year later I took the Extra and  passed.  So now I’m one of those
ignorant Extras that seem to aggravate  some of you.  But then I spent my career as
an architect.  You know,  someone who knows next to nothing about a whole
lot of  things.

Remember, for some of us, this stuff is neither obvious nor  easy.  Please
be charitable.

BTW, I hope my on-the-air  clumsiness hasn’t set too many of you on your
heels.
 
John Ferguson  AI4TO (If you think i got it by memorizing, boy are you  
wrong. I can't remember the way home)  M/V  Arcadian





Joe Subich, W4TV  wrote:
Sieve,

> Browbeating the ignorant for their ignorance,  either as a class
> or as specific individuals does nothing to advance  ham radio,
> and a good deal to retard it.

This "attitude" is not  a matter of browbeating the ignorant for
their ignorance.  It may be  browbeating the self entitled for
their attitude of entitlement and their  unwillingness to make
any effort to improve their skills and  knowledge.  

There are too many amateurs who believe that they do  not need
to do anything for themselves ... that memorizing the answers  
to a few questions entitles them to demand that others do the
thinking  for them and answer every question, no matter how
basic or in  appropriate.  These same "entitled extras" seem
to feel it is up to  manufacturers to build equipment that
operates as these inexperienced  amateurs WANT it to operate
rather than the way experience nictitates things  work in the
real world.  

Rather than understand that a license  is a starting point,
an opportunity to start learning, the "entitled extras"  seem
to think a license entitles them to all the benefits, knowledge
and  experience of all those who have preceded them without any
effort on their  own part.  It is much like so many children in
high school and  university today ... they expect the teachers
and professors to "teach" them  but fail to understand that they
have a duty to listen and learn.  

73,

... Joe, W4TV


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