[RFI] Wasted and Useful Bandwidth

[Bill Turner]

On Fri, 30 Apr 2004 09:35:11 -0700, Ward Silver wrote:

>Sturgeon's Law says,
>"90% of everything is crap."  He was being generous.  The tiny remaining
>percentage that is not crap generates all of the advances that drive human
>progress.  The Amateur Service is just one way of enabling the non-crap to
>be created - packet radio, APRS, novel antennas, survivable ad hoc networks,
>interesting propagation discoveries, etc. etc.  We just can't know where
>it's going to come from, so we have to leave ourselves openings for it by
>not occupying or consuming all resources for the currently defined utility.

_________________________________________________________

Those things are all great fun to tinker with and use, but I doubt if
any of them were pioneered by hams.  As far as I know, the military and
commercial services are way ahead of us in everything you mention.

Not to take away from the great traditions of amateur radio, but in
nearly every field we have been outstripped by the military and
commercial boys.  They have essentially unlimited funding and we work in
our garages in our spare time.  Is anyone surprised?

"200 Meters and Down" is a great read and great ham history, but its
time has pretty much passed.  Sigh.

--
Bill, W6WRT
QSLs via LoTW