[Elecraft] OT: High school drafting class, ~1975

[Wayne Burdick]

OK, I've really dated myself now. 

Anyone remember "drafting"? A favorite class in high school: blueprints, mechanical drawings, schematics, straight edges, hand lettering, projections and elevations. We invented things to draw that weren't real, but looked like they should be. Did all the math by hand -- on a slide rule, if necessary. Day-dreamed about what we might one day build.

45 years later, we're using tools we couldn't have imagined. Modeling circuits and objects with millions of parameters and vectors, realizing them in virtual space, manipulating them in real time. Testing finished products before they're even assembled.

The transformation is mind boggling. Yet the best part now, as it was then, is the occasional burst of creative energy that propels an idea forward. The feeling of pieces falling into place. Or forcing them into place out of sheer necessity. 

Most of the time, we think of our new tools and techniques as advances in the state of the art. Things we can't live without. But those same defining moments happened just as often in simpler times.

Case in point -- my first real project, a rendition of W7ZOI's Micro-mountaineer. Carefully documenting it took several sheets of 4-squares-per-inch grid paper, which may still be in my cellar, beneath a lifetime of such drawings. With the schematic, I took a lot of pride in making the circuits look well-organized, as if that would somehow improve my odds. On the PC board, I drew large traces and pads with the etch-resist pen, as if that would somehow appease the electrons. 

I etched the PCB, soldered two dozen parts, and connected a 12 V lantern battery. Thanks to my paranoia about what would happen if I did it wrong, I'd taken my time and done it right. 

I was rewarded with a hiss of band noise and a few CW signals on 40 meters.

Here's to those moments, and to that timeless pursuit: turning abstractions into reality.

73,
Wayne
N6KR