Colleen,

Your contributions are very impressive.  You are an active, major
contributor to ham radio and to your community and country with your
participation in NTS Traffic Handling, participation in Emergency
Communications including Skywarn, participation in the Amateur Radio Drills
and your participation as a member of Navy Marine Corps Mars. Further, you
are to be commended for being a Net Control for the OHIO Single Sideband
Net and the Net Manager for your local Ares Traffic and Training Net in
Northwest Ohio.

You are, indeed, quite correct; that is we each have our individual niche,
That was precisely my point; we each should be respected for the unique
contributions that we make to the hobby and to our community.

 I have been very impressed with the repertoire of knowledge and expertise
exhibited by the people on this list, especially everyone's immediate
willingness to pitch in and help each other.  

Ron, AC4HM

 
At 02:31 PM 8/20/2012 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi,
>I would probably be called an Appliance Operator. I don't build things, I
don't figure out antenna formulas, I don't do any soldering. I do not do
contesting, and I don't use Echolink. I do encourage NTS Traffic Handling,
I do participate in Emergency Communications including Skywarn, Amateur
Radio Drills and am also a Member of Navy Marine Corps Mars. I am a Net
Control for the OHIO Single Sideband Net, I am also Net Manager for our
local Ares Traffic and Training Net in Northwest Ohio.
>I know enough to know if I need to get someone to help when equipment is
functioning well.
>We each have our niche.
>Colleen Roth, N8TNV;
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Ronald E. Milliman <[log in to unmask]>
>To:  [log in to unmask]
>Date: Sunday, Aug 19, 2012 02:36:20 PM
>Subject: diversity of ham radio as a hobby
>
>>
>>
>> One of the really great things about ham radio as a hobby is its diversity.
>>  That is, there is something in it for everyone.  Over my 55 years in ham
>> radio, I have enjoyed at different times about every aspect of the hobby,
>> from Rag chewing on the 75 meter phone band, initially using a DX-40 on
>> A-M, to stepping up to SSB using a Central Labs 10A barefoot, to chasing DX
>> on all bands running QRP up to 1500 PEP with an Alpha linear, from HF to
>> VHF and operating field day and contests, Working All States and then,
>> earning the DXCC.  I have built several pieces of gear from scratch using
>> my own design to building kits from Heath Kit and Globe when they were
>> still in business marketing ham gear.  I especially enjoyed designing and
>> building all types of antennas.  It has been fun meeting people at hamfests
>> that you have QSO's with for a long time but never met in person.  I've
>> burned my fingers lots of times using the soldering gun while building
>> equipment, and you learn really fast that you can never have too much
>> saliva on your fingers when soldering connections.  I've had my share of
>> failures, burned up rigs, and antennas that I could never make resonate for
>> some reason.  Speaking of math, I've found it necessary to use lots of math
>> when designing gear, figuring out the right values of parts that were
>> needed for specific tasks, and I have often used the Pythagorean Theorem to
>> compute how high my tower or the center of my antenna needed to be.  So, my
>> point is that there is something in it for everyone, and over time, you
>> will probably do like I have done and find different aspects of the hobby
>> appealing to you at different times of your life.  
>> 
>> My newest adventure is to figure out how to use Echolink and play around
>> with it.  Why?  Simply because it is just another aspect of the hobby to
>> check out.  No, it isn't ham radio in the traditional sense, but then,
>> using repeaters was very controversial when hams first started using them
>> too believe it or not.  When SideBand first showed up on the ham bands in
>> the form of double sideband, it was so controversial that it put the hobby
>> into a war, literally, a war between the comAM'ers and the sidebanders.
>> Double sideband didn't last very long because developers quickly figured
>> out how to filter out and suppress the unwanted sideband, either the upper
>> sideband or the lower sideband, depending on which band you were on.  There
>> has always been some sort of controversy; perhaps the most recent is the
>> debate over dropping the code requirements and in some ham's views,
>> dummying down the ham exams.  I'll have to admit to you that it was much
>> more challenging for me to take the General license exam back in 1958 when
>> I had to draw out all of the diagrams and schematics.  Since I couldn't see
>> well enough to draw them myself, it was even more challenging to try to
>> describe them to someone and have them draw them well enough so the FCC
>> Examiner could understand it.  To be perfectly honest with you, the Extra
>> Class exam that I took at the end of the 1990's was actually easier in many
>> respects than the General Class exam I took in 1958.  
>> 
>> I'm sharing all of this with you to encourage all of us to respect all the
>> different aspects of ham radio and the hams that enjoy all of these various
>> parts of the hobby.  I've heard some hams called "appliance operators," and
>> admittedly, I've used the term at times in the past, but some people just
>> don't have the interest in being ham techno-geeks like some of the rest of
>> us might be.  So, there is a place for all of us.
>> 
>> Ron, AC4HM
>>   
>> 
>>   
>