Topband: Models and the real world

[EP Swynar]

On 30th December Tom (W8JI) wrote...

> IMO people are spending far too much time with models and not enough time
actually building and measuring what they model. We are becoming a world of
modelers where the little box on the desk gives us a false sense of physical
reality.

> It's actually kind of scary how absolute we think models are and how it is
ruining our feel for how things really work.

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Hear-Hear...! How very true...

The scenario to-day is not unlike an old Rock Hudson movie I recall seeing
from way-back-when --- "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" I believe was its
name --- all about a celebrated "how-to" expert who wrote a best seller on
the art of fishing...but who had never so much as cast a fishing line in his
life!

Tom is correct in his assertion that many of us have become far too
comfortable in our positions of  "arm chair" antenna experts, thanks to the
wonderful software that's available for computers to-day.

Case in point: when was the last time you saw anything that was truly
in-depth, or enticing, in the "Results" paragraph of any antenna article
that you've read in the past ten years? It seems that the authors of such
pieces prefer to splash their literary efforts with lots of
computer-generated graphs & radiation projections supporting the premise(s)
of their designs --- but when it comes to actual, "hands on / real world"
results (the stuff that actually compells you to go out & raise a similar
antenna of your own), they fall flat...

In the matter of antenna experts, I'll take to heart first what the guy with
the skinned knuckles & burnt finger-tips has to say, over most anything that
the guy with carpel-tunnel(sp?) syndrome in his wrists might offer...!

~73~ Eddy VE3CUI - VE3XZ