[CW] Thank you, Zenith Radio Corporation - it's been fun

Sun Aug 9 15:51:08 EDT 2015

Hans,

That is probably reading a bit too much into my comments.

For all I know, stamp collectors might have the same qualities.

What I was talking about is the perception by some that CW operators are
"odd".

I do not find them so, but then again, maybe I am a bit "odd" or "a little
bit off".

I did not mean at all the CW operators have qualities that no one else has.

But I did mean that maybe Charles Ring has uncovered a reason that many
discribe some of the CW operators as a "bit odd".

Just that and that some people - actually quite a few at least on ship -
thought radio officers were a bit strange.

I certainly don't want CW operators to isolate themselves, I have never
been an person who isolates himself and I have always enjoyed other
people's company.

I do find CW operators to be of a better quality of others -  not all
others but just "others".

As I said, you're reading far too much into what I said, and I also could
have taken more time to more precisely say what I meant.

I do understand that the "I am a CW op and I am much better than you" has
been said by some, but this is not what I meant, and I don't agree with
that.

It's not the CW that makes the person.

I will avoid sitting on the stove top from now on, I promise.

73

DR

On Sun, Aug 9, 2015 at 2:19 PM, Radio K0HB <kzerohb at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> *“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
> --- Arthur C Clarke*
>
>
>
>                I’ve spent the bulk of my adult life involved in things
> which can generally be termed “technology”, and for fifty-odd years I’ve
> played in a “geeky” hobby called ham radio.
>
> Growing up in the 1940’s and 1950’s on a small rural farm not even blessed
> with electric lights or a telephone (let alone a refrigerator or a
> television set ) does not seem a likely incubator for a lifelong vocation
> and avocation in electronics, radio, and telecommunications.  So how did
> that transpire?
>
> It was all the result of a stew made up of a mix of adolescent boredom,  curiosity,
> the romance of “far away places”, and an old six-volt Zenith radio.
>
> In our “front room” (“living rooms” were for town people) on a convenient
> table next to Dad’s chair stood a large Zenith radio set .  Everything on
> a farm serves some purpose, and this set served to provide the daily 5PM
> news and weather report from WDAY in Fargo.  It wasn’t used a lot for
> “entertainment”, with the exception of the Thursday evening weekly episode
> of “Dragnet” to which Dad was addicted.  Beyond that, the radio stood
> idle.
>
> Now besides the usual AM broadcast band, the old Zenith had 3 or 4
> additional “short wave” bands.  Despite a long wire antenna which
> stretched from the house to the top of the haybarn, those short wave bands
> were the home mostly of static and very weak foreign sounding stations.
>
> With one exception.  On dark quiet winter evenings the “4-6 Megacycle”
> shortwave band would sometimes contain a lot of squeaky/squawky morse code
> signals.  I knew that our mail carrier was something called a “ham
> radioman” so I asked him about those signals.  He said that they were
> probably messages being sent back and forth from ships at sea.
>
> To a preteen kid on an isolated farm in the middle of the great plains, he
> might as well have told me that they were messages between Venus and Mars!
> I was determined to learn Morse so that I could eavesdrop on the secrets
> that they were exchanging.
>
> Turns out that those “secret messages” were mostly about mundane things
> like position reports, weather reports, and expected arrival times, but
> thus began my love of the magic of radio.
>
> Now, having said all of that, I need to take exception to the notion
> advanced by N1EA in another thread that ".... most CW operators to be
> exceptional people and of a greater quality than the "others"".  Hams, CW
> operators or not, are just another group of hobbyists, no more, no less,
> just like stamp collectors, piccolo players, mountain climbers, flower
> growers, and X-Box manipulators.  Other talents, other interests.  We CW
> operators are not some super-smart cultish group with a secret code, and
> knowing how to send and receive those beeps is a talent easily gained by
> most anyone with a little interest.    And while some licensees might well
> be autistic, I expect that is a "dubious blessing" shared in equal
> percentage with the rest of the population, which Mr. Ring calls "others"
> and  "the outside world".  In fact, we are no better as a group, and no
> worse as a group, than all of our fellow travelers on this little blue dot
> called “Earth".
>
> Life is a bright window open very briefly between two long dark
> eternities.  It’s far too short to isolate yourself as somehow "special" as
> compared to the rest of humanity who share your time in this short window.
> 73, de Hans, K0HB
> --
> "Just a boy and his radio"™
> --
> Proud Member of:
> . ARRL - http://www.arrl.org
> . RSGB - http://www.rsgb.org
> . A1 Operators - http://www.arrl.org/a-1-op
> . Minnesota Wireless contesters - http://www.W0AA.org
> . Arizona Outlaws contesters - http://www.arizonaoutlaws.net
> . Twin City DX Assn - http://www.tcdxa.org
> . Minnesota Amateur Radio Technical Society - http://www.mn-arts.org/
> . Lake Vermilion DX Assn - http://www.lvdxa.org
> . Royal Naval Amateur Radio Society - http://www.rnars.org.uk/
> . SOC - http://www.qsl.net/soc
> . CW Operators Club – http://www.cwops.org
> . SKCC - http://www.skccgroup.com/
> --
>
> ______________________________________________________________
> CW mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/cw
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:CW at mailman.qth.net
> CW List ARCHIVES: http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/cw/
> Unsubcribe send email to
> cw-unsubscribe at mailman.qth.net
> Subscribe send email to cw-subscribe at mailman.qth.net
> Support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
>
> =30=
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/cw/attachments/20150809/05c861f8/attachment.html>