[R-390] Fair Radio R-390A Question?

[Robert M. Bratcher Jr.]

Tell me something. Did you learn anything new in those classes? Were they fun?

I didn't learn much (over what I knew already thanks to my radio hobby) 
when it came to my radio class. It was very easy. So much so that I didn't 
study & still made straight A's on every test. The TV class was sort of 
half easy the rest I learned quite a bit & still made an A for that course. 
You bet I enjoyed both of them!

While other guy's were hot rodding cars (among other things) I was having 
fun in my backyard ham radio shop. Reading old (30's through 50's era) ham 
radio & electronics magazines plus whatever books I could find building 
vacuum tube circuits and chatting on my (usually by CW) ART-13 transmitter 
& Collins 75A-2 receiver with hams all over the world. Seems the SSB guy's 
didn't like to talk to AMers so I wound up building my own bandswitching 
SSB transmitter after awhile. I had my own (homebuilt) 1KW SSB/AM/CW 
transmitter by the time I reached my 16th birthday. Thank God I wasn't 
paying the light bill! Spent a lot of time with ham radio, shortwave 
listening & general electronics from 13 until around 30 (or so) years of 
age. I still mess with it (at 43) but not like I used to...

Why did I get into tubes during my teen years? They were easy to find & a 
lot cheaper than todays prices.

At 03:59 PM 5/1/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>No, you wouldn't have. I was already a ham when I started high school. I
>was in an advanced electrical curriculum of three years with several
>different classes each day dealing with electronics and electricity,
>plus labs. We even had a computer course (how to desing and build logic
>circuits (now called programming) using relay logic) so we'd be ready to
>enter the world of vacuum tube computers that was just opening up. I had
>several years of electronics theory dealing with tubes. We just barely
>touched solid state as it was too new to be considered worthwhile at the
>time. Trust me, I did not do a whole lot of paying attention in class
>when it came to electronics. Maybe if I was a "ham wannabe" I would have
>paid attention, but I felt I already "knew it all" as a ham.
>
>73, Ray  W2EC
>
>"Scott, Barry (Clyde B)" wrote:
> >
> > I wish they would have had vacuum-tube theory in my high school.  I 
> would have paid attention in class a LOT more...
> >
> > Barry(III) - N4BUQ