[ARC5] Amateur v Professional (was R-392 B+)

[Leslie Smith]

Hello Ken,
I hope you will allow me to have a little fun (at my own expense, of
course).
You say: "> Good on ya. An excellent thing to do, in my opinion. Why on
earth would 
> someone want to "fix" something that ain't broke? I never could understand 
> that sort of thinking..."

Well,  you see, I'm an "amateur".  I mean a REAL amateur.  
As an amateur MY goal is to break things that are fixed, in contrast to
fixing things that are broken.
An amateur thinks like this:  "I know I only do this on the weekend, in
contrast to a professional, who does it about 40 hours per week.
Some-how, despite my part-time involvement, I feel know that I know more
than "they" know - and that's a nice thing to know."
I know (as an amateur) I don't have proper test gear, but I can put my
wet finger on the B+ line and tell the 400 volt supply is down somewhat
..."
An amateur (I only refer to "me", not others) is good at things like
knowing how strong the B+ line is WITHOUT a multimeter.

As an amateur I don't really pay attention to the difference between mHz
(milli-Hertz) and MHz (MegaHertz) because I know that the other amateurs
around me can accurately supply the frequency I failed to denote
correctly.     Sometimes ignoring the difference between "m" and "M"  is
FUN.
For example, when a power line is marked "stand clear - 12,000mV" and
some-one touches it, thinking it's only 12 volt.  
It's a real fun to see 12,000 MEGA volts jump out and zap the person.
There is real fun of labelling things incorrectly ....

Of course, some professionals are "amateur". 
I listened in horror as VK2GL described how a colleague "defeated" all
the protection circuits around the 120kV cage in a radar unit where he
worked.
Then his colleague walked into the cage ....  with the power on.
His colleague lived, although probably only because there was some other
protection gear working at a deeper level he hadn't defeated.

So I hope you understand my thinking better, Ken.
My thinking isn't well organized, because I'm an amateur.
Certainly, my thinking isn't easy to understand, as you said earlier.
But - boy, oh boy ...  woolly thinking is FUN!

73 from Australia
(where most of us are amateurs)*

-- 
  Leslie Smith
  vk2bcu at operamail.com

*((Apologies to those who aren't ....)


On Mon, Mar 11, 2013, at 5:35, Kenneth G. Gordon wrote:
> On 10 Mar 2013 at 12:41, Meir WF2U wrote:
> 
> > On the other hand, some R-392 owners feed the filaments and the plates
> > separately, because some claim that the receiver performs better with
> > around 36 VDC on the plates, instead of the specified 28 VDC.
> 
> Yes. I have read of that.
> 
> > I
> > haven't seen any performance measurement result with 36 V plate
> > voltage, and I'd never inflict that on my R-392's...
> 
> Good on ya. An excellent thing to do, in my opinion. Why on earth would 
> someone want to "fix" something that ain't broke? I never could
> understand 
> that sort of thinking...
> 
> It seems like you will always find someone who will "push" things without 
> thinking about possible bad consequences.
> 
> Maybe they just don't care.
> 
> Ken W7EKB
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-- 
  Leslie Smith
  vk2bcu at operamail.com

-- 
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