The article is okay about the satellite and packet aspects of ham
radio.
HF ham activities are, in my opinion, given not only short
shrift, but
are erroneous. It is as if the people he was interviewing had no
idea about HF, so he made it up. Even though he seems to
highlight the computer aspects of packet and satellite
operations, no mention is made as to the HF computer usages and
benefits.
Also, and more importantly, no mention is made at all as to the
public service aspects of the hobby. This one thing should be
most blatant by its absence since it is THE first thing mentioned
in part 97 as to our reason for existence.
Yes, we can wax eternal about how this article will help ham
radio. But we can and should also wax eternal about how this
article can and (again, as far as I am concerned) did paint a
skewed picture for the public of us as a group. Lessee....those
of us who are involved in satellite and packet activity are 'with
it', while those of us operating on HF are old, living in the
past, and not 'with it'.
As long as inaccuracies are present in an article, I see no
reason to applaud the writer or the newspaper which carried it.
A few months ago a cartoon appeared in which someone was
identified as a ham in a negative or derogatory way. I believe
the ARRL even went so far as to reprint it in QST. I guess from
some people's point of view, no matter how badly it makes hams
look, any mention about ham radio is okay.
Like I said before....we see big...no, BIG discrepancies in his
article in which he wrote about things we all know about. Think
about the discrepancies that must appear in other articles about
subjects that we don't know much about. Scary, isn't it?
Excuse me, I hear a station on my gizmo, I'll go call him from my
hill top estate with my odd looking antennas and 4,000 watt
amplifier now that evening has arrived.
Dale Martin, KG5U
kg5u@hal-pc.org
http://www.hal-pc.org/~kg5u
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