After all, ham radio is no more what it used to be: try listening to the frequencies used by radio amateurs, and ask to yourself if these frequencies shouldn't be used for something more useful (emergency services managed by real professionals, wireless networking, broadcasting, etc.). There is no more real experimentation being done today by radio amateurs, and internet offers a better way to communicate, without the trouble of getting a licence, buying a station, raising an antenna, and so on.
Some time ago a 10 uF capacitor in a PSU exploded close to my face while servicing a PC. Luckily the PSU box was pretty well robust, and I had no injuries at all, but I'll remember for ever the loud BANG that followed (with a lot of smoke).
I wonder if the same could happen by misfortune with one of these devices. AFAIK cellphone batteries seldom explode, so I am not so sure if capacitors would be a safer alternative.
I have been a radio amateur for more than twenty years, but this year I gave back my license and sold out everything. Why ?
Well, I entered into ham radio when I was 15 years old, because it was a very exciting hobby: plenty of thinghs to learn about radio, antennas, propagation, lot of fun with ham radio friends (at that time we set up a very strong group who took part to contests, field days, DXpeditions, and some nice girls joined us as well;-) ).
I spent lot of time contesting, making difficult contacts in HF and VHF bands. Then computers arrived: and so go on with packet radio, signal processing, computer controlled receivers, adding fun to fun. I also had a lot of fun writing some software for ham radio, and internet added just more fun to the fun.
But unfortunately during these very last years thinghs changed dramatically: no more funny people around (the average radio amateur now is a 70-something years old, and usually very, very ugly), girls disappeared entirely, and what is worst, it became apparent that people involved into ham radio were more interested into spending money into new shiny rigs to show up around, rather than into learning how to get the most out from current equipment. Radio contacts became also very boring, all the contacts now look the same ("you're 59, QSL 73 bye bye"). Packet clusters finally killed the fun of chasing rare stations.
Is all this worth the time and money ?!? I decided it wasn't, so I gave up.
IMHO I see no more reasons for ham radio to exist, nowadays. And please do not tell me about technichal advancements reached by radio amateurs! New technologies used by radio amateurs are actually developed by a very small number of people, and they cannot be exactly be called "advanced", if compared with what industry is doing. What has enough market potential is lobbied by ARRL and other ham radio organizations, and finally big firms jump into the market to make out some profit. Packet radio, APRS, and now SDR are some clear examples of this process: the average radio amateur simply puts some money out from his pocket, and here it is the new technology, ready for use!. What do you learn from this (apart wasting money) ?!?
To defend ham radio it remains maybe the help that amateurs can provide during emergencies, but I believe that organizations like Red Cross, Emergency, and so on could (and should) develop their own emergency networks (and I think that some frequencies currently assigned to ham radio should rather be used for this purpose). As you can see, the game is really over.
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Please give us rather a working wireless connection from our homes to our office desks.
...I have to slowly dim the lighting of my room ?!?
Yeah, you save $ 998,000 for each launch, but have you considered the amount of the electricity bill for the railgun ?!?
- a big wall-mounted red button for turning mains voltage off
Other suggestions can be found here.After all, ham radio is no more what it used to be: try listening to the frequencies used by radio amateurs, and ask to yourself if these frequencies shouldn't be used for something more useful (emergency services managed by real professionals, wireless networking, broadcasting, etc.). There is no more real experimentation being done today by radio amateurs, and internet offers a better way to communicate, without the trouble of getting a licence, buying a station, raising an antenna, and so on.
Some time ago a 10 uF capacitor in a PSU exploded close to my face while servicing a PC. Luckily the PSU box was pretty well robust, and I had no injuries at all, but I'll remember for ever the loud BANG that followed (with a lot of smoke). I wonder if the same could happen by misfortune with one of these devices. AFAIK cellphone batteries seldom explode, so I am not so sure if capacitors would be a safer alternative.
I have been a radio amateur for more than twenty years, but this year I gave back my license and sold out everything. Why ?
;-) ).
Well, I entered into ham radio when I was 15 years old, because it was a very exciting hobby: plenty of thinghs to learn about radio, antennas, propagation, lot of fun with ham radio friends (at that time we set up a very strong group who took part to contests, field days, DXpeditions, and some nice girls joined us as well
I spent lot of time contesting, making difficult contacts in HF and VHF bands. Then computers arrived: and so go on with packet radio, signal processing, computer controlled receivers, adding fun to fun. I also had a lot of fun writing some software for ham radio, and internet added just more fun to the fun.
But unfortunately during these very last years thinghs changed dramatically: no more funny people around (the average radio amateur now is a 70-something years old, and usually very, very ugly), girls disappeared entirely, and what is worst, it became apparent that people involved into ham radio were more interested into spending money into new shiny rigs to show up around, rather than into learning how to get the most out from current equipment. Radio contacts became also very boring, all the contacts now look the same ("you're 59, QSL 73 bye bye"). Packet clusters finally killed the fun of chasing rare stations.
Is all this worth the time and money ?!? I decided it wasn't, so I gave up.
IMHO I see no more reasons for ham radio to exist, nowadays. And please do not tell me about technichal advancements reached by radio amateurs! New technologies used by radio amateurs are actually developed by a very small number of people, and they cannot be exactly be called "advanced", if compared with what industry is doing. What has enough market potential is lobbied by ARRL and other ham radio organizations, and finally big firms jump into the market to make out some profit. Packet radio, APRS, and now SDR are some clear examples of this process: the average radio amateur simply puts some money out from his pocket, and here it is the new technology, ready for use!. What do you learn from this (apart wasting money) ?!?
To defend ham radio it remains maybe the help that amateurs can provide during emergencies, but I believe that organizations like Red Cross, Emergency, and so on could (and should) develop their own emergency networks (and I think that some frequencies currently assigned to ham radio should rather be used for this purpose).
As you can see, the game is really over.