[Hallicrafters] Re: Nobody wants to be a "technician" anymore

[kiyoinc at attglobal.net]

I have a couple comments before getting on to Hallicrafters issues.

 From my perspective, as a older ham, software engineer with an M.S. 
CSci from the engineering school (SEAS) of a national university (George 
Washington University), and 35 years in industry, the comments were 
right on.

However, do not be fooled, newer graduates are not computer literate in 
the sense of computer science grounding. While there are exceptions, 
they tend to be skilled on using specific tools, similar to the techs 
who are helpless without their laptop and instrumentation port on the 
failing device.

Your techs have a hard time debugging hardware and certainly cannot 
design power/RF/analog systems. 

Recent computer graduates cannot design or debug software systems, they 
cannot see the "big picture".   

Here are several real examples.

1) a large organization's network is running slow.  They spend hundreds 
of millions to upgrade their desktops from 100baseT to fibre.  It still 
runs slow.  I notice that FTP server-to-server file transfers across 
their enterprise runs at 4 to 5 megabits/second.   This is the signature 
of a 16 megabit token ring connection.  I tell the network group 
repeatedly.  6 months later, they "discover" a legacy token ring 
connection interlinking their gigE backbone.

2) a small web business served by 15 megabit FIOS runs out of ports on 
their 4 port switch.  I give them a 24 port Cisco Catalyst 1900.  
There's a discussion of how the 10baseT 24 port switch will slow them 
down.  I explain that the there is no way that their small web business 
will saturate a Cisco Catalyst.  Their main server and firewall will sit 
on a 100baseT segment, the devices on the 10baseT segment are all old 
and slow, like their HP Laserjet 4si.

3) an organization spends a million dollars a year on an internal 
website that no one uses.  The cost is high because they burn money 
"configuration managing" and "quality assuring" as well as building 
dynamic pages using a back-end Oracle database.   I point out that the 
site serves up 23 internal documents and has a contact-us page.   It 
could be handled by one person, part time.  That's if they used the KISS 
method.  Keep it simple, stupid.


It's not just power systems, RF, communications, there is a vast vacuum 
of technical understanding out there.

I think one difference is that many of us Hams grew up with our old 
SX-100, a Heathkit or homebrew 3 tube transmitter.  We spent our time 
learning to read schematic diagrams and squeezing another 10 watts out 
of the 6146. 

I remember two guys in my high school, way back in the 1960's, building 
preselectors to get a little more out of their receivers.

Another problem is that schools today teach boxes or products.   I've 
heard corporate yammerers (you've seen them, these are the non-technical 
blowhards that infest large corporations) say that the problem with 
universities is that they are not teaching the important stuff, like 
Microsoft Word.   Whoa.  The problem is that the second and third tier 
schools are teaching Microsoft Word and not Automata Theory,  
Combinatorics, State Machine Theory, or machine language programming.
 
If you cannot program down to the bare metal, drive the control 
registers and purge the translation lookaside buffer under software 
control, what good are you?  This is the software engineering difference 
between a no-nuttin hardware tech and an electrical engineer, or a real 
tech with solid grounding and experience.

Reading specs and buying a computer to play games does not prepare you 
to work on systems. 

Conversely, making an old HT-32 and Drake 2B work as a contest or DX 
station does prepare you to solve systems design problems.   Back in the 
1960's, one ham struggled for months to build a keyer (that's both the 
electronic keyer and the paddles) and add QSK to his tube station.   
When you only have vacuum tubes and a hacksaw to work with, you have to 
think through the problem.

Hallicrafters.  Anyone know what the restored SX-100 sold for on the Bay 
last week?   I was watching it but didn't see the final price.  This was 
a fully restored radio that a fellow fixes up as a hobby, then sells.

The pictures looked really nice and I was wondering how he polishes and 
cleans the chassis.  

If someone has it, I'd like a link to the completed sale or his eBay 
name so I can study the pictures and his description. 

W0YVA does a similar chassis clean up on his Collins but he seems to 
take the radio completely apart and rebuilds it from the ground up. 

de ah6gi/4