[TenTec] In praise of older technology

[Jim Lowman]

This reminds me of being in Air Force MARS when I was stationed in Japan.

It was a 2m net, and I had the Icom IC-21; a very popular 2m FM-only 
transceiver at that time.

During one of the nets, the net control operator commented about some 
guys being off frequency.
Those IC-21s were crystal-controlled but, of course, crystals change 
frequency with age.
There was a trimmer capacitor next to each crystal, but most of us had 
no frequency standard to calibrate our radios.

The comment was met with a lot of "so what?" answers.
The net control operator pointed out that the procedure was to zero-beat 
the NCS.
This really got people upset, which detracted from the purpose of the net.
Of course, he was correct about the procedure, but he said it in the 
typical "brown-shoe lifer" tone.
Some guys even stopped checking in after that.

As you may have guessed, I had no problem re-acclimating to civilian 
life after eight years, since I never got into the military mindset.

73 de Jim - AD6CW

On 2/22/2014 4:03 PM, k6jek wrote:
> Even with a leader, it can be pretty amusing. I participate in a vintage sideband roundtable most Tuesdays. We all tune to the roundtable leader. Depending on what he's running we can end up 5 kHz from where we started if somebody doesn't jump in and drag the whole conglomeration back. And many of the people who have tuned to net control haven't really succeeded. Maybe the tuned to where he used to be. Maybe they just couldn't hear what's right.
>
> Jon, K6JEK
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