On 1st December, Rich wrote:
"...I keep telling myself I will complete one more small one, have most of
the parts ready."
*************************************
Hi Rich,
I was "...mentally musing" in an off-site e-mail with another Ham about the
fact that Ham Radio has really lost something invaluable in that we have
seemingly NOT replaced icons like Lew McCoy, Doug DeMaw, or Bill Orr...
Remember those three...?
Oh, they seem to have fallen upon "hard times" in this enlightened, modern
day & age --- the author of one ARRL-published book seems to especially
relish in his personal "de-fusing" of some of DeMaw's published
statements...and more than one linear amplifier web site harbinger has
precious little good to say about Orr.
Still, I look around me to-day, and I simply do NOT see classics like
McCoy's "The Junker Amplifier" (60's- era QST), or his updated "The Silver
City Kilowatt" (80's-vintage CQ). These venerable pieces were sheer
inspiration in their day, and still can be to-day! They demonstrate in
plain, easy-to-read text, how a collection of readily-acquired, surplus
parts can be nicely & neatly assembled into 500-watt, and 1-kilowatt, linear
amplifiers, respectively...even by guys like you & me who are NOT emeritus
graduates of places like M.I.T.
Similarly, the three part series on the whys & wherefores of linear
amplifiers that was published in the late 70's by HAM RADIO magazine is "de
riguer" for anyone in 2008 who might be thinking of "rolling his own."
Some ideas & concepts may well have changed over the years --- and for the
good --- but the overall message conveyed in these timeless articles is
sheer inspiration in the highest sense: "YOU REALLY CAN DO IT!" They
certainly stoked the flames of curiousity within VE3CUI in their day, and
I'm sure, within the hearts & minds of countless others.
To replace such stuff now with a VISA card and the advertisers' index in QST
is sheer travesty. Perhaps one good thing that might arise out of all this
current economic upheavel is a re-kindling of the Amateur spirit that says,
"...I can do it BETTER, and I can do it CHEAPER!"
And we really can, too, you know --- it's just that some of us lost a little
of our way...
~73~ Eddy VE3CUI - VE3XZ
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