[Amps] The genius of ham radio

[Paul]

Hi Charly

Really? Is that how you'd like commercial airline designers to work?

I can't let that reference to Richard Feynman go past without comment. 
He really was a genius. His Feynman digrams made Dirac's work on Quantum 
Physics accessible to many other scientists and he got the Nobel Prize 
as a result. Feynman was invited onto the Rogers Commission and although 
he was a theoretical physicist, he demonstrated what the problem was in 
a very practical way when he put the O ring material into iced water. He 
cut through all the smoke and mirrors to get to the heart of the problem.

BTW and as an aside. While there isn't any evidence I know of that 
Feynman was a radio amateur, he was very interested and almost one of 
us. He described how he loved messing around with old radios as a kid. 
And he pirated. In his book, Surely You are Joking Mr Feynman, he says 
of the time he was working in Brazil, "I found an amateur radio operator 
in Brazil, and about once a week I'd go over to his house. He'd make 
contact with the ham radio operator in Passadena. and then, because 
there was something slightly illegal about it, he'd give me some call 
letter and would say, "Now I'll turn you over to WKW, who's sitting next 
to me and would like to talk to you. The first guy went on vacation, but 
he gave me another amateur radio operator to go to. This second guy was 
blind and operated his station. They were both very nice, and the 
contact I had with Caltech by ham radio was very effective and useful to 
me."

73 Paul G4DCV

On 12/01/2015 06:51, Charles Henry wrote:
> Roger roger, Roger......I have read about the best science of its age swearing the Earth is flat, torturing people saying the Earth circles the Sun, and lately that objects, matter, can be in two places at the same time.  "Knowledge" is a slippery thing.
> My point is that the genius of ham radio, not highly financed esoteric research, is making things work, being the only way of getting a message passed, inventing cell phone systems, heck... inventing radio itself.
> We have to listen to the one genius way down in the bowels of the hierarchy who keeps saying that a frozen bit of foam will puncture a big hole in the Shuttle wing or that a rubber O-ring freezes when there are icicles on the whole launch structure.   Oh, go ahead and launch... what does HE know!
> 73, Charly
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