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 The Curmudgeon, having been licensed in the Amateur Radio Service for more than fifty years, has had a long-standing desire to attend the nation’s premiere annual ARS convention, the Dayton Hamvention. However many small, niggling practical matters, such as employment, family, and funding have always created road blocks. Now in full retirement and well along [...]  The GORC Morse Telegraph Special Event celebrates the first successful demonstration of the telegraph in the US at the Speedwell Iron Works on January 6th, 1838. “On January 6th, 1838 an event occurred that would change the world as we know it today. On January 6th, 1838, Alfred Vail, Samuel Morse and a boy named [...] The recent series of posts dealing, in part, with the future of the Amateur Radio Service launched the Curmudgeon’s thinking into a new direction. Being a “philosopher dude” kind of guy whose thoughts tend to move toward larger and more futuristic issues, the Curmudgeon generalized his thinking to consider the future prospects for the entire [...] Last time we looked at the consequences of a broadcast channel allocation matter in which a small, analog Low Power TV station was displaced from its high UHF channel assignment in Pleasantville (a medium-size city located near Gotham City, a regional metropolis) by the FCC’s re-allocation of its existing LPTV channel to the new 700 [...] In this final part of the series, the Curmudgeon looks backwards (with just a little nostalgia) at the ARS of fifty years ago as a reference point for today’s Service and notes that, even then, it was not a perfect society. And he gazes into a well-clouded crystal ball and hazards a few guesses about its future. [...] In the previous post, the Curmudgeon looked at the first of the two major sociological changes that, in his opinion, have occurred in the Amateur Radio Service during the past fifty years: the “dumbing down” and “consumerization” of the ARS. In this post he examines the second major change. This other change, the Curmudgeon suggests, is the ascendency of ARS operators’ ego as a principal organizing force. It has changed the Service during the past half-century, and not for the better. There are several ways in which this trend manifests itself today. [...] It’s not been the Curmudgeon’s intention to devote appreciable coverage to the Amateur Radio Service (ARS) in these blog postings. A majority (perhaps most) of today’s telecommunications professionals are no longer licensed hams, although in past decades they most likely would have been. However, two recent personal events again brought the ARS into focus. In the first, earlier this year the Curmudgeon (today an Amateur Extra Class licensee) celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of earning his first ARS license, which was the (former entry-level) Novice class ticket. The second event was receipt of a gift of some computer CD-ROMS containing sets of page image files for the historic 1930 through 1959 issues of QST Magazine (the principal ham journal, published by the American Radio Relay League). [...]  In response to the last blog posting, a San Diego Amateur radio operator kindly forwarded to the Curmudgeon the enclosed photograph and some of his observations of the monster residential ham antenna that set off the furor with the city government. The enclosed photo shows the situation on the ground there. For identification, this antenna [...] The Curmudgeon has received word about and has done a little investigating on an evolving issue. It’s the sort of thing that has to make you scratch your head and wonder just exactly where we have taken ourselves. It’s the kind of matter that causes you to feel a bit queasy inside. We’re back for [...]  Ham radio commemorative QSO party, learn more [...] LBA asks: So many of those in our industry are amateur radio operators, including staff at LBA, that we asked the Old RF Curmudgeon to come out of his den and give us a read on the health of ham radio today. The Amateur Radio Service has an almost unduplicated position for a recreational activity/leisure [...] |
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