[Lowfer] 630 Meter Liner Amplifier Article?

[Facility 406]

On 11/16/2025 04:28, jrusgrove--- via Lowfer wrote:
>> but digging through the online forum, is like
>> slogging through a dumpster of old junk mail behind the post office, to
>> see if anyone tossed anything interesting
> 
> About spit out my morning coffee reading that ... my sentiments exactly.
> Apparently people have way more time on their hands than I do. E mail
> reflectors are best ... so quick to delete, delete, delete, delete ... as fast
> as you can press the key.

A real-world scenario that plays out several times per day:

I discovered email reflectors in the mid-90's, as things transitioned 
away from BBS's.

I am currently subscribed to about 150 reflectors, groups.io, qth.net, 
and a handful of private systems.

In reality, on a slow day, I receive around 600 email, on a busy day, 
around 1,000.

I check e-mail a few times per day, my initial morning check has by far 
the most messages, 300-400, for the overnight download.

It takes me, at MOST about 15 minutes to glance over the subject lines, 
while deleting things of no interest to me.  Maybe another 10 to 15, 
which is an absurd amount of time, to follow/read up on topics I'm 
involved in, or interested in.  After that, any other checks are in the 
3-5 minute range.

On very, VERY rare occasion, I may spend a half hour, or longer, really 
getting into a topic, but that's rare.  Maybe twice a month.

I am currently on my 5th keyboard, I always lose the delete key, and 
they are rated in the millions of presses.

By comparison, imagine going to a site, finding a forum, then slowly 
scrolling through a thousand messages per day, clicking on one of 
interest, then going to that tab/page, and reading it, then closing 
that, and doing it all over for the next.  1,000 times.  Per day.  Or, 
wait a week, and do it maybe ten thousand times more if there's a lot of 
activity.

And, what if you find something you like?  Save that tab/page?  Now, 
name, and sort, and store them.  Some of my email folders have many, 
many thousands of saved messages.  Impractical?  I use "search", and 
find something from years ago in a few seconds, and the entire thread 
shows up on on that subject, in every single group, in a nice little 
outline, or tree.  Super easy, like my own little internet, but only 
with information I want.

In the BBS days, I'd open a "forum", set up "save log file", then hold 
down the "N" key for next message, and let it scroll through, then save 
the text file, for each different forum/topic, and read later- sometimes.

I can't imagine how many years were lost going back reading log files, 
most of which didn't apply to whatever interest I had.

I glanced through the LowFER online forum yesterday, it's less flashy, 
but no more practical that facebook.  Missed a post?  Good luck.  I 
don't live in a phone, or computer, I'm not like kids nowadays, or those 
people I see sitting around a table, ignoring the universe, waiting for 
that quick fix from the next thing to pop up.

Was talking it over with the XYL last night, I really thought the entire 
hobby had disappeared.  I didn't push to get my beacon back up, shut 
down in late 2004, or early 2005, because, why?  For the other three to 
four people that might be out there, based on unknown, and obscure 
activity and posts on one page, where if I show up in an hour, may never 
see anyway?  It really was heartbreaking.

In my opinion, the online forum really, REALLY needs to be paralleled in 
other mediums, email should be the #1 priority, and make it 
bi-directional, like pagers were, 35 years ago.  By dropping the one 
universal, and global medium, even something an autistic meth addict 
would have on $12 burner flip-phone from Dollar General, in my quick 
review of activity, based on 15 years of saved messages, as best I could 
tell, and have thought, nearly 100% of interest evaporated.

Heck, I still monitor for LowFER/HiFER/MidFER/V-FER email daily, but 
haven't bothered with hands-on in 2 decades, even when I received a 
message from someone about 5 (was it ten?) years ago about getting my 
beacon back up, and the fellow wanting to know if it should be dropped 
from the beacon listing.  The longer I delayed, the less activity I saw, 
so, why?  This morning, is no different.

And, my beacon?  Dropped from the listings.

My beacon is STILL sitting on the desk, to my left, with all good 
intentions to get it up, maybe, someday, in theory, probably, I guess, I 
really don't know, we'll see...  Would anybody notice, and, if they did, 
would anybody know?  Would I?

Now, increase all that above, by every single person, with an interest 
in just this one hobby alone, daily, globally.

Talk about a hobby holocaust!

Fooey.

Kurt