[Lowfer] Rememberances

[Peter Cranwell]

Kids today want immediate gratification.  Even some of the 40 year old crowd 
doesn't have patience to work on projects that may take weeks - months - 
years.

I play piano in a local church.  I love classical music.  When I perform I 
usually get the comment "I wish I could play like that".   My reply (many 
times not verbalized) is "You might be able to if you dedicate several hours 
a day, every day of the week for most of your life."

Radio takes study and time, not to mention money.  The days of cheap surplus 
are long gone.  Now the projects take a lot of cash.

Young folks today want to plug it in, turn it on and expect flashing lights, 
and all sorts of magic but few are willing to invest the time to understand 
it and when they hear static they don't want to listen.  If they can't call 
up Antartica on first try they go on to something else.

Guess what...... My piano works even when the power is out.

Pete


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Barick" <pbarick at wpo.cso.niu.edu>
To: <lowfer at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 10:59 AM
Subject: Re: [Lowfer] Rememberances


Hi All,

Like Tom and Dex, I have similar grounding in "electronics." First hearing 
two 6th grade friends doing telegraph between adjacent houses (bedroom to 
bedroom style), I made a sounder but had no local pal to connect with. Next 
came a boy's experimenter book from the school library. I built a regen 
using a 1H4G triode, but burned out the filament on switching the batteries. 
H.S. was the big jump into real ham stuff. An older boy had his license 
(seemed so adult then) and his HB rig of 807's piqued my interest. Then came 
the WWII surplus equipment, parts galore . Those WERE the days.

Beyond that which seems common here, where are the boys with electronics of 
today? I don't see or hear of them. I realize all fads have their time, was 
radio one of them? Seems so. Check on all the silver hair seen atttending 
hamfests these days, even the numbers are slipping. Internet, Rap music, PC 
games are all suspect. Still I don't get it.

Peter

>>> Tom <n8tl at woh.rr.com> 09/05/08 9:29 AM >>>
Gee...back in the early 50's, another friend and I used a neon sign
transformer working a 1 inch gap against ground into a longwire antenna
to communicate. Boy...what a pretty sounding buzzzz across the spectrum
that was! It made for some good 20's cw.
Tom N8TL

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