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 **************A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1221823232x1201398636/aol?redir=http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=668072&hmpgID=62&bcd= May5909footerNO62) ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
