[Amps] Maintenance-free

[Catherine James]

A lot of this comes down to increasing technological complexity.

As a teen-ager and early-twenty-something, I changed the oil in my car.  It was easy.  You either popped the hood or crawled under the car (depending on the model), used a tool to break the oil filter loose and unscrew it, replaced the filter, threw away the old oil, and refilled.

Nowadays, you can't just throw away the oil (we used to just let it drain into the dirt of the yard!), but have to recycle it; there is far more stuff jammed into a small area, so it is harder to get your hands in there and remove it; you often need special tools, as I discovered when I replaced a broken turn signal switch in the early 90's; and things that used to be simple mechanical or electrical connections are now mediated by computers or programmable controllers.  You often need test equipment that the typical home garage doesn't have and can't justify buying.

After a few hours of fiddling with my SB-220, I am now comfortable working on it and expect I can keep it running as long as I can get parts.  Reading about these "99 errors" and need to reset microprocessors on more modern amps leaves me cold.  I have zero interest in trying to do maintenance on something with that level of complexity.

73,
Cathy
N5WVR

On Sun, 2/26/17, Paul Christensen <w9ac at arrl.net> wrote:
> Dick Ehrhorn...indicated that in today's "run it 'till it breaks" society, folks were more comfortable
> with near maintenance-free air cooling.   Most appliance operators didn't have the skills, nor the
> ambition to learn about the 70V maintenance schedule -- just as I have no longer have the ambition,
> nor motivation to change my car's oil in my home garage.