[GreenKeys] QSO's with glass tubes

Wed Feb 5 02:23:02 EST 2014

for me,  bringing an old mechanical teletype back on line and working  with 
it, learning the history of it and it's makers and learning the history  of 
 those who chose to re-purpose  it  to fill commutations  needs...  Ed#  
KF7RWW

In a message dated 2/4/2014 11:23:09 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time,  
keelan at beefchicken.com writes:

The  appeal of amateur radio is going to change. With global communication 
becoming  a commodity, the future generation of hams will be attracted for 
different  reasons. The future of amateur radio will see the hobby getting 
back to its  roots. In the face of dwindling sales, the big manufactures will 
give up on  producing amateur equipment. Surrounded by software defined 
radios that make  every mode of communication a matter of just downloading the 
right software,  the amateur of the future will want to get back to the 
basics of building  radios with just his hands, a fist full of discrete 
components, and a solid  understanding of RF electronics. QRP will gain in 
popularity. Why dump a  kilowatt into the atmosphere to talk to someone in Guam, when 
you can Skype  them in full high definition video and near CD quality sound? 
The appeal in  amateur radio will shift away from ‘best’, ‘more' and ‘
faster' towards a  mentality of ‘cheap’, ‘less' and ‘creative'.  

The age of the glass TTY will die out. It already seems a bit silly using  
software to emulate a protocol that has been bettered by other protocols  
(PSK31), especially when the same software is usually capable of both.  
So-called ‘Glass TTYs’ will be reflected upon as a blip in time, a moment of  bad 
judgement, while the mechanical TTYs will continue to capture the  
imagination of folks for years to come.

Show an 20 year old a glass TTY, and he’ll say “So what, I can text my  
friend in South Korea right now with my iPhone, and I don’t need to sit down  
at the computer." Show a 20 year old a running Model 28, and you’ll see his  
curiosity oozing out. To kids born and raised in a world defined by 
software,  things that solve problems mechanically are pure magic. Point a 
store-bought  yagi at Alaska and feed it a kilowatt from a store bought radio with 
store  bought linear amp, and a 20 year old will remind you about Skype. Have 
that  same kid witness a QSO made with a radio constructed dead-bug style 
in a  sardine can, using an antenna strung up in a tree, and you’ll have his  
imagination reeling.

I suspect that in the future, the “off the shelf” era of amateur radio  
will be looked back upon with some degree of derision, as a period of time  
when we let big companies steal our hobby out of our hands.

This isn’t just pure fantasy either, other hobby industries have seen a  
similar transformation. An example? Knitting. For a period of time, there  
existed quite a substantial industry around home knitting machines — amateur  
machine knitting, if you will. Big names, Brother, Toyota, Husqvarna to name 
a  few, were all involved in the business. Knitting machines evolved, 
becoming  fully electronic computer controlled.

Then one day, something happened: in the face of declining sales due to  an 
aging customer base, Brother, the market leader, pulled the plug on their  
home knitting machine business. One by one, all of the others followed suit, 
 and the “industry” collapsed in the late 90’s. To the financial observer, 
the  business collapsed overnight. But to the hobbyist, that isn’t the case 
at all.  For many machine knitters, this industrial abandonment was a 
prompt to get  back into hand knitting, and that hobby has seen a significant 
increase in  interest. As the computerized and electronic knitting machines 
break down  (replacement parts are getting very expensive to source), knitters 
are  dragging their old punch card controlled machines out of the closet. 
Hobbyists  are taking apart their electronic machines and developing custom 
controllers  and software for them. People are learning how the machines 
really work, and  they’re trying interesting and creative things with them that 
the automation  made impossible. Lacking a huge body of fashionable 
at-the-ready patterns,  people are more apt to create their designs from scratch.

I’m convince that the most satisfying part of a hobbyist pursuit comes  
after the “big boys” have moved on for more lucrative territory.

- Keelan

Footnote: My mom was a busy publisher of machine knitting patterns and  
books; declining sales, a cancer diagnosis, and the loss of the big  
manufacturers saw her shuttering her business in 1999. She beat the  cancer.

On Feb 3, 2014, at 4:39 PM, _gbuda at cyberwright.net_ 
(mailto:gbuda at cyberwright.net)  wrote:

It has been many years since I’ve had my machines on RTTY.  I gave  up when 
trying to work the glass tube operators.  They don’t understand  the 
concept of CR, LF & LTRS at the end of each line and some of the  software doesn’t 
even offer you CR and LF options, just word wrap.  I  had a software 
developer tell me I had to “get with the times” because  his software did not 
have CR and LF.  Need to be able to speak to the  lowest common denominator…
which is why we sometimes have to slow our Morse  code down to 5 wpm.  Painful, 
yes, but worth the  investment! 
Gary WA0NDN
NNNN

=

______________________________________________________________
GreenKeys  mailing list
Home:  http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/greenkeys
Help:  http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post:  mailto:GreenKeys at mailman.qth.net

2002-to-present greenkeys archive:  
http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/
1998-to-2001 greenkeys archive:  
http://mailman.qth.net/archive/greenkeys/greenkeys.html
Randy Guttery's  2001-to-2009 GreenKeys Search Tool:  
http://comcents.com/tty/greenkeyssearch.html

This list hosted by:  http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list:  http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/attachments/20140205/cddf5ffe/attachment.html>