I get the same impression of the local hams here. That's just the way it is. You can't expect everyone to be enthusiastic about donning an eye loupe to desolder some miniscule part, using a schematic diagram that shows a hundred tiny lines running close parallel to each other. What fun ! No, i think we're in the new age, where if you work on anything, it's equipment connectors and lines of program code. 

Some of the new hams i swear, could not draw the schematic of a flashlight, i mean the single function no - chip ones too. Certainly not the schematic for the stairs lighting, where you have a switch at top and bottom and either switch can cotrol the light. Certainly they couldn't do well in the old TV game show sponsored by CQ magazine, "Name That Thing",  the show where contestants had to look over a strange electronic device or box and tell what it was.

Oops - that game show was a fiction story from a 1950s CQ.

That's just the way it is. 

-Hue Miller