[CW] CW Digest, Vol 109, Issue 17

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

It was a numbers game for ARRL, more numbers for the ranks.  "QST" has gone
from a magazinse with easy to very technical to just easy.  It has local
section news, not now.

There is precious little in it now.  Years ago someone would write a very
innovative piece about a new tube in RF low level amplification and mixing,
or new circuits.  Most were using discrete components - because that way
you could optimize the circuit on your own.  You could change the
parameters of amplifiers, get oscillators keying very smoothly or
sequentially keyed.  A novel way of feeding cross polarized antennas, even
Hints and Kinks had some fascinating insights.

The last such article I read was by a WW2 radioman who worked out phase
 quadrature I Q detection for his 40 meter receiver giving a 3 dB increase
in weak signal amplification.

The Generals and Extras wouldn't understand much of it if they just
memorize.  As always there are some very bright folks who already knew
electronics and just had to study the radio laws and practice to pass their
license.

But even the ones that have a license and don't know how to drive (?) some
of them WANT to learn.  Some of them much to their surprise want to learn
Morse - but even there there are NEW PROBLEMS that we never had.

I was interested in Morse but I never thought I'd be really good at it, I
wanted to be competent but how good I was surprised me.  Knowing how to be
a good Morse operator just carried over to phone - I still maintain to this
day that most excellent Morse operators are excellent radiotelephone
operators, they know the flow of radio, they have the rhythm of it.
 Somehow with CW radio gets into your soul.  And like anything you love, it
becomes beauty itself.

v73
David J. Ring, Jr., N1EA <http://www.qsl.net/n1ea/>  Radio-Officers
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=30=


On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 5:59 PM, N7DC <n7dc at comcast.net> wrote:

>
>
>
> The trouble is Hans, that the government publishes them, just as they have
> since they did away with Novice.  Almost every book I have seen, with the
> questions, also gives the answers.  The other trouble is, and I see this
> more important, the instructors who teach the test.   That is how you can
> get a dozen new Generals in something like a 6 hour class given on a lazy
> Saturday afternoon.  Done correctly, It takes more time than that.  My last
> multi day teaching of Novice was in the 1984 Boy Scout Jamboree,  I taught
> the subject - not the answers.  Teach someone how to work out the formula,
> and use it, for a 1/2 wave dipole, and they forever know it: not just the
> answer for the one frequency listed in the book.  It is just about as
> stupid as having a school teach one do a math equation in class, and use
> that same question for the tests, and follow that pattern over and over
> again.
>
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