[Elecraft] Boldly OT: 6 meter Sporadic-E season and the FT-8 microjuggernaut

[KENT TRIMBLE]

What is being overlooked in all of this discussion is that the bulk of 
today's ham population makes its living at a keyboard.

When the bulk of an eight-hour work-day is spent in front of a monitor, 
it should come as no shock that an entire generation will prefer making 
QSOs with keyboard-keys rather than telegraph-keys. For them it requires 
less skill, less time, and less patience . . . precisely the kind of 
activities most sought by millennials.

Everything on this earth evolves, including amateur radio, and evolution 
has never been straight-forward.  It explores, imagines, and 
experiments.  It leaves behind a trail of bad ideas, weird adaptions, 
and dead-end cul-de-sacs.  At one time trilobites ruled the oceans.  The 
oceans did not change, but the trilobites went away.

My CW class on Saturday mornings has several IT guys who work for the 
State of Missouri.  They are fascinated by code ... not their kind of 
code ... Samuel F.B.'s kind of code.  They learned it mostly on their 
own and want to get better at it.  They bring in keying projects, they 
bring in paddle renditions, they bring in mini-programming accessories, 
they keep bugging us to schedule forays to the boonies so they can throw 
wires into trees and "play radio."  No one has yet told them such 
efforts take time, skill, and patience.  Apparently they don't care.  
Why?  Beats me.  Come Monday morning they're back in front of their 
monitors all day.

In Hiram Percy's house are many rooms.

73,

Kent Trimble, K9ZTV
Jefferson City, MO