[Elecraft] Reaching across the chronological divide

[David Gilbert]

There is absolutely nothing wrong in experimenting with antennas just 
for the fun of it.  I've done it and enjoyed it, but I didn't learn much 
from it.  The fault comes in pretending that experimenting without 
understanding is better than, or at least equivalent to, actually 
spending the effort to understand what you're doing.  Trying something 
... anything ... is fun, but too many hams seem to want to use it to 
justify ignorance.  All of those people you mention may not have had the 
Antenna Book, but they did have the writings of each other and I 
guarantee that they used them ... which is exactly what the Antenna Book 
is since it was written by other hams who took the trouble to understand 
what they were doing so that you at least had the opportunity to do so 
as well. Nobody says that you have to take advantage of that, but it 
does mean that you're just choosing the fun of playing with stuff you 
don't understand very well ... like somebody who just mixes different 
chemicals to see what happens.  And yes, I've done that as well.

Dave   AB7E



On 1/3/2021 3:39 PM, Joseph Shuman via Elecraft wrote:
>
> I simply like the challenge of making contacts with antennas, in the opinion of the more learned, “that won’t work.”  I have been told to “Read the antenna book” because my experiments are “illogical.”  I guess I have to delete the contact I made using a chicken wire antenna?  Let’s all remember that Maxwell, Marconi, Hertz, Popov, Bose, Hughes and Fr. Roberto Landell de Moura did not have the internet or the Antenna Book.  They had each other.