[Boatanchors] Ham Radio - Then and Now

[Michael D. Harmon]

Hi Folks.

I'm not one of those guys who remembers the 'really old days', but I'm 
63 and I've been interested in electronics a lot of years.  I grew up on 
vacuum tubes and can remember well when all the old timer radio-TV 
service guys in my hometown folded up shop and retired when solid state 
circuitry and printed circuit boards took over the consumer electronics 
business.  They just felt like they couldn't adapt to the newer 
technology, and weren't interested in learning all the newer 
troubleshooting and repair techniques.  For quite a few years there was 
a real shortage of qualified techs.  Eventually, the correspondence 
schools and a few tech schools and junior colleges developed electronics 
curricula and started producing techs with updated skill sets.

I became interested in electronics at the age of 13 and built my first 
kit - a Knight-Kit tube tester - that same year.  After that, I was 
hooked!  Before I had finished high school, I had built a Heathkit VTVM, 
a signal generator, a shortwave receiver, code practice oscillator, and 
another kit of two I can't remember.  My dad would come into my room, 
see all the parts laid out, and leave shaking his head, convinced that I 
had spent all my allowance money on a pile of parts that would never be 
of any use.  Back before communications satellites were commonplace, 
NASA used ground relay stations to retransmit spacecraft 
communications.  These stations used single sideband and Popular 
Electronics magazine used to publish the frequencies so that you could 
listen in.  My little Heathkit GR-64 receiver was tuned into the NASA 
frequencies every time a big space mission was underway.  It's hard to 
explain how exciting it was to actually hear the astronauts and Mission 
Control talking to each other!

When I got to college, I worked at the FM college station.  I built 
dozens of small Heathkit tuners and receivers for the various offices on 
campus.  After the station went to 27 kW stereo, I was hired as 
assistant chief engineer.  Of course, all repair work was 
component-level work.  We might replace a defective module to get back 
on the air, but it always found its way to my bench for repair.  I built 
a lot of custom module test jigs when I worked there.

I got my Novice license at 18 and my FCC First Class Commercial license 
with the Radar Endorsement the following year.  Over the years, I 
upgraded to Technician, then Advanced, and finally took the Extra test 
and passed in 2000.   Even though I chose a career in IT,  I've never 
stopped being interested in electronics.  I was fortunate to be able to 
retire at 51 and have been having a blast ever since.  I consider myself 
primarily to be a technician, and secondarily an operator.  I have a 
shack crammed with Tektronix, HP and Fluke test gear, the majority of 
which were EBay orphans brought back from the brink with lots of TLC.  
I've given a number of scopes and other gear to young kids who were 
interested in electronics.

I worry somewhat that today's newcomers to electronics don't have the 
curiosity and excitement that so many of us old-timers had when we were 
kids.  I think many of them have a jaded ho-hum attitude toward 
technology.  They've grown up with cell phones, Playstations, big-screen 
LCD TVs, Ipods, and other technology, and it's not fascinating to them - 
just a part of life.  I have a 3-month old grandson, and I'm planning to 
fix him a place in the ham shack when he's older where he can come and 
watch me work on things.  Maybe I can instill a little bit of that spark 
in his mind.  If he will sit still long enough, I'll let him talk to 
hams all over the world.  He can go to school and instead of telling 
about the TV show he watched about a foreign country, he can tell about 
the people he talked to who lived there.

Just my two cents' worth ...

Mike, WB0LDJ
mharmon at att dot net