[Elecraft] Attitude??

[Jferg977 at aol.com]

Well, gosh.  I thought all this was about people like  me.

3 years ago I decided we wanted email on our boat while in the  islands.  
To me this meant HAM.  Getting the equipment, setting up the  boat, trying to 
learn the stuff and the 5 wpm looked pretty daunting from the  outside.  
What if we spent the $2k ++ and it didn’t work, or I couldn’t  pass the test? 
 

Enter Elecraft and the K2 – I read the QST  review.  So I started to study. 
 After 6 months I was pretty sure I  could pass the written – but not the 
code.  I bought HAM University for the  code and after a year took tech, gen, 
and code on one day and  passed.

I bought the kits to build k2/100 and kat100 with the nb,  ssb, and kaf2.  
I built the noise blanker first because it had a torroid  and I’d been 
assured that winding them was awful.  It went ok so I built  the rest of the 
stuff and IT WORKED although there was some chimping with the  marine-vhf 
microphone I’d modified to use with it.

The hardest  thing to resolve was how to do the antenna and rf grounding on 
the boat.   If you haven’t looked, you wouldn’t believe the nonsense on 
this subject that is  available on the web.  I picked the system that seemed 
easiest and whose  recommendation was most literate (and funny) of the many I 
found. I lucked  out.  It too worked.  Then I found out what a Pactor cost 
and decided  to forget about the email.

A year later I took the Extra and  passed.  So now I’m one of those 
ignorant Extras that seem to aggravate  some of you.  But then I spent my career as 
an architect.  You know,  someone who knows next to nothing about a whole 
lot of  things.

Remember, for some of us, this stuff is neither obvious nor  easy.  Please 
be charitable.

BTW, I hope my on-the-air  clumsiness hasn’t set too many of you on your 
heels.
 
John Ferguson  AI4TO (If you think i got it by memorizing, boy are you  
wrong. I can't remember the way home)  M/V  Arcadian





Joe Subich, W4TV  wrote:
Sieve, 

> Browbeating the ignorant for their ignorance,  either as a class 
> or as specific individuals does nothing to advance  ham radio, 
> and a good deal to retard it. 

This "attitude" is not  a matter of browbeating the ignorant for 
their ignorance.  It may be  browbeating the self entitled for 
their attitude of entitlement and their  unwillingness to make 
any effort to improve their skills and  knowledge.  

There are too many amateurs who believe that they do  not need 
to do anything for themselves ... that memorizing the answers  
to a few questions entitles them to demand that others do the 
thinking  for them and answer every question, no matter how 
basic or in  appropriate.  These same "entitled extras" seem 
to feel it is up to  manufacturers to build equipment that 
operates as these inexperienced  amateurs WANT it to operate 
rather than the way experience nictitates things  work in the 
real world.  

Rather than understand that a license  is a starting point, 
an opportunity to start learning, the "entitled extras"  seem 
to think a license entitles them to all the benefits, knowledge 
and  experience of all those who have preceded them without any 
effort on their  own part.  It is much like so many children in 
high school and  university today ... they expect the teachers 
and professors to "teach" them  but fail to understand that they 
have a duty to listen and learn.   

73, 

... Joe, W4TV 


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