[AMRadio] Last comment on the can of worms.

[CL in NC]

"If your hobby goal in life is to hold a soldering iron in
your hand for hours every day, more power to you, but I prefer the ease
of getting on the air quickly and making contacts when ever I want
without the constant diddling with knobs and meters and smoke."

I don't prefer that at all.  I love to make contacts, just using a different form of signal generation and conversion, that I don't have to send to a repair center to get fixed..  I was fortunate enough in my career to go from the height of tube technology, through transistor to LSI and on to microprocessor based comm gear.  The last TX/RX gear I worked on had an on/off switch, and LED indicator lamp and a DB9 connector on an 'A' size rack panel.  They were guaranteed for 10 (ten) years, if it broke, put in the spare and send it back.  Not a lot of skill needed there, just the ability to reprogram the spare.  Does a man who restores a '58 Vette and drive it live in the past?  How about the guy who restored and flies a P51?  What about the guy that builds a 1 1/2" scale EM-1, 2-8-8-4 live steam locomotive taking  12 years to do it, is he living in the past?  I surely don't live to fill  logbooks with maximum contacts before I die, and like the
 other fellow said, there is plenty of room in this hobby for all disciplines.  For some reason, the folks that like to restore, maintain, and operate old gear catch a lot of  flack for there little corner of the ham room.  

Charlie, W4MEC in NC