[Milsurplus] We're losing a sense of history

[Gene Smar]

Gents:

     Maybe the subject, above, is a bit melodramatic, but that's the sense I got after delivering to a local Ham Radio club this week a presentation on military squad radios.  (For those of you on the MRCA reflector, this is the presentation I was unable to give at GIlbert last year.)  My presentation covered military pack radios and HTs from WWII through early 'nam.  I titled it <Squad Radios From Omaha Beach to Heartbreak Ridge to Ia Drang Valley.>    The audience consisted mainly of newly-minted (in the last ten years) Hams, license classes unknown, a few graybeards who have been licensed for over thirty years, and a couple of club applicants there for their first meeting.  My presentation was a choronological trip through the evolving electrotechnologies of 1944 through 1965.

     Some of the questions I got during the presentation are:

o   What's the difference between Megahertz and Megacycles?  (I had been using Mc/kc to describe frequency coverage of the milrads.)  My answer to this question was <Spelling.>

o   How did they get the crystals to change frequencies?  I had to explain that to change freqs in the crystal-controlled radios the radio tech had to put in a different crystal on a different freq.

o   What is a B+ voltage used for?

o   If you have A, B and C batteries in tube radios, then what are D-cells used for?  (I really did get this question.)

o   No one asked whether the radios were all superhets.  (My demo units all were.)

o   No one knew what a super-regen receiver was (when I discussed the TBY.)

o   Several of the audience did ask whether that was a Prick 77 (I said mine was a -25) and did I have the longer antenna for it (yes, I did but not at the demo.)  Some of these gents had served in USA during the late 50s and some in Desert Storm.

     I was deeply saddened that the basic knowledge we all had to acquire to correctly operate our hollow-state equipment years ago is being lost on the new Hams.  I realize that technology is changing rapidly and that, for example, crystal-controlled rigs are mainly a thing of the past.  (I did, however, ask the audience how many of them owned crystal-controlled HT's.  None raised his hand.  I had to point out that they ALL had crystals in their synthesized rice boxes.)  

     I suppose the Hams in the 20's thought this way about CW and Superhets and other changes they were experiencing, either through gummint regulation or technological evolution.  But it sure is sad to think that in a few years, very few of us will remember things like paper QSL cards and the smell of solder in the morning.

73 es HNY de
Gene Smar  AD3F

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/milsurplus/attachments/20090123/9edeea17/attachment.html