[Milsurplus] Non Directional Beacons and change

[Bob Camp]

Hi

My grandfather started off playing with radios as a kid. In that era, things like ham licenses didn’t yet exist. 

By the time he got into his 70’s, things had changed a lot. I’m at that point now and yes, they have changed a lot for me as well. From talking to him back in the day, it’s not at all clear that the impact of change has been any more pronounced on my generation compared to his. The number of things that simply didn’t exist as he grew up is a very long list ….

Bob

> On Dec 4, 2025, at 2:02 PM, Ray Fantini via Milsurplus <milsurplus at mailman.qth.net> wrote:
> 
> Couple years back my son in law was stationed at Joint Base Langley-Eustis and one of the projects he did was decommissioning the NDB. It had been in operation forever; he tells me that in the brick shack it was located in that there were the remnants of the old open wire feeding system but all that was replaced years ago by a solid-state transmitter with coaxial feed lines. About a year after that he pulled most of the analog VHF/UHF AM stuff from the tower after replacing it all with digital secure stuff. It’s amazing how fast that old technology disappears after being in operation for so long, figure the original NBD may have first gone on the air in the early thirties. I was somewhat sad to think of it gone, he was glad to see it go and no longer having to be responsible for something no one used.
> The older I get the harder it is to deal with sweeping changes, I know that in broadcasting we have had huge changes in TV, conversion from analog to digital, repack and now ATSC3 rearing its ugly head. When I started working years ago, we repaired things, now almost all I do is replace technology that goes obsolete years before it fails. I have removed and scraped many television transmitters and at school we regularly send functional working Macs and PC to recycling because they won’t accommodate the latest operating system.
> I know that change is constant, but don’t know if it’s me or if the pace of change has dramatically increased?
> Wonder if that’s the fascination with us old timers and things like NDB reception or playing around with obsolete technology? Some attempt to recapture a relic of the past.
>  
> Ray F/KA3EKH
>  
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