nickcarr wrote:
KB7AIL wrote:
We have some weird people involved in our hobby.
If you attend any one of a dozen HAM radio meetings around the area then this is the first thing you'll learn... I remember going to my first back in the early 1990s and most of the older gentlemen looked like they worked at Boeing and were still stuck in a 1970s time warp. Dull color shirts, faded jeans or ugly slacks, thick glasses, pocket protectors and that smokey, coffee breath.
At that time, analog reined supreme (there was no digital) but the radios were "fancy" in that they had CTCSS encode and decode "built-in" with sexy "Liquid Crystal Displays" -- with a night light so HAMs wouldn't get scared in the dark! Funny, I remember how most of the older crowd despised the newer technology back then... just as most of us despise digital now. :)
I must have been to some of those meetings. One thing I did not sell was a Yaesu 227R- the Memorizer. Many old duffers walked by and looked longingly at it and told me how great it was. I thought I was being pretty fair by pricing it at $45. Until I was able to see another guy who had a pile of 90s vintage dual banners (TM-721 and such) for $40.
I'm a fan of old codgers and had a good time talking to some of them. When I'm 85 and get a day pass out of The Home, I hope to be one of those guys talking to kids to see what they think. I'm 60 now and like to talk to the guys in their 20s and 30s. I let 'em lead the way and explain what they are doing and throw in a few nuggets of history when appropriate and eventually they act like they want to hear some history. Like when, if you wanted a home computer, you bought a board out of a magazine and then hunted down all the parts and soldered them together yourself and when 'free software' was printed in the back of the magazine and you typed it in yourself. Then they start talking about their "Raspberry Pi" computer and we are on equal ground and are able to discuss something substantive and really learn from each other. We whine a bitch about kids a lot and much of it is deserved but I think we have some sharp ones out there.