[Elecraft] Why I build. Why I bother...

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

In the years before television, our family enjoyed something that was
attractive enough to pull me away from my Philmore crystal set with its
finicky "cats whisker" that had to be set just right to hear the whisper of
broadcast stations in my headphones. Our whole family would visit a large
railway station a few miles away. My older brother, Mom, Dad and I spent
many happy warm summer evenings there on the station platform watching the
steam locomotives chugging back and forth along sidings assembling cars into
trains. The ballet of moving rail cars was interrupted from time to time by
a passenger train arriving at the platform, the car windows filled with the
faces of travelers arriving from a distant city. 

To this kid, watching one of those huge steam locomotives hauling a long
train clanking, chugging and blowing off steam as it stopped only a few feet
away from me was almost as exhilarating as snagging clear-channel radio
station KFI on my Philmore late at night. 

Almost. I guess that's why I ended up in electronics instead of working on
the railroad. 

Technology has given me many great tools. There's a lot that I can see on TV
that expands my world. There's even more on the World-Wide Web. Still, those
appliances tend to isolate me from the real world. It's the difference
between driving my MGA roadster and cruising along in an air-conditioned,
sound-insulated luxury car. The modern car may offer greater convenience and
comfort, but it does so at the cost of isolating me from the world outside. 

There's more than nostalgia or the necessity of saving money in tinkering
with homebrew designs and assembling kits. It's a search for a balanced life
in which we make time to experience things that interest us "up close and
personal". It's coaxing an unlikely collection of parts into herding
electrons around so we can pick up the movement of a telegraph key or the
sounds of a voice from a distant place. 

It's a sense of "wonder" - like seeing that giant steam locomotive roll to a
stop next to me all those years ago. 

How can a person be healthy without experiencing a sense of "wonder" every
day? 

Ron AC7AC