Just for the halibut, I asked "Canva" an AI image generator to capture the spirit of POTA. I asked it to generate an image of "A young Ham Radio operator, sitting at a picnic table in a park, sending Morse Code on his radio".
This is what I got:
Not bad, actually, right? But for some reason, AI always seems to get human hands wrong, and I labeled them in the image. In this case, this poor guy seems to have three! Two at the radio, one on the table. I've noticed this on a lot of AI generated images where people are part of the scene. Weird, very weird. If it wasn't for the third hand, which I guess some of wish we had sometimes, it wouldn't be a bad image. Kind of nostalgic in a way. I like the guy's hat!
Speaking of the spirit of POTA, someone was complaining on the Facebook POTA page that the admins don't keep track of who first activates an entity. They don't - you can look up how many times a park has been activated, and who has activated it, how many times a person has activated a particular park etc. but not who first activated it. (EDIT - actually as one of the commenters below pointed out, they DO keep track of who first activated a park - but there's no award or certificate for it. That's a more accurate description of what triggered the complainer - mea culpa for getting that wrong! And thank you Mark AI4BJ for pointing that out)
That seemed to crumble the cookies of the poster. "If my friend takes a day off from work and drives 1/2 way across the state to be the first one to activate a new park, he doesn't get recognition for it? Why do we do POTA then?"
"Maybe just to have fun and and enjoy doing radio in the great outdoors?", I answered.
Does everything need to be a competition? Does everyone need to have a trophy? Has the concept of doing something just for the fun of it become a relic? Sadly, I guess it has.
Oh, I hate that term! But it's become prevalent among certain Hams who get annoyed and exasperated with certain older Hams. I guess it's better than the previously used term - "Old Fart".
It's the typical generational thing. The newer Hams don't understand the older Hams and the older Hams don't understand the newer Hams. It's like when you were a kid and you got tired of hearing from your parents or grandparents, "When I was your age, I had to walk to school 5 miles in the snow ..... up hill both ways!"
The fact is that if you were licensed before 1980, you had no resource but to study the license manuals that were available at the time. You read and learned the theory and the rules. There were no question and answer books where you could memorize the answers that were on the exams without really understanding the why and wherefore.
That all changed in 1979 / 1980 when Dick Bash came out with his "Final Exam" books. I never had one of those, but as I understand it, these books consisted the questions and answers from the actual license exams. The story goes that the author had people questioned who had just left from taking their FCC proctored tests as to what questions they saw on the exams they just took.
True or not? I don't know. But whether it was true or not, the appearance of the Bash books seemed to trigger or hasten the demise of FCC testing and promulgated the evolution of the VEC system. Maybe it was just the governmental budgetary constraints of the time, but whatever the real reason, the system changed.
The VECs published the questions and answers that would be on the exams in their license manuals. Sure, there were a bajillion questions from which only a relatively few would be picked, but it changed the game. Of course there were still potential Hams who studied the "old school" way (sorry, couldn't resist the pun), but now there were candidates with good enough memories who just memorized what they needed to know in order to pass the exams. It still holds true to this day. I'm a VE and I see both types of candidate preparation all the time. Oh the angst when a question pool is about to change! As the VE Liaison who arranges our VE Exam sessions, I can't tell you how many times that I hear "Do you have room for me on your session on the XXth? I want to take my exam before the question pool changes!" And in my head I'm thinking ......"The questions aren't changing that much. If you know THE MATERIAL, you'll be fine." But I hold my tongue, as I don't want to ruffle any feathers.
The problem is that. as a result, you have a lot of new Hams out there who really don't know what they're doing. And this may get me in hot water, but we haven't helped the situation by conducting "Ham Crams". Those are another thing that I just abhor. Trying to cram about 8 weeks worth of non-stressful conventional learning into one or two days is just chasing rainbows as far as I'm concerned. I'd love to find some way to find license retention figures of Amateur Radio ops who went that route. I'm willing to lay down money that there is a large percentage of these Hams who are most likely not to renew, or have not renewed their licenses.
As a result, and I have experienced this personally, you have some Extra Class Hams who don't have the foggiest notion as to how to build a dipole or program an HT. To make matters worse, they either don't know where to go to look up the information they need, or sometimes they seem to even lack the desire to do so They just depend on people who know what they're doing to spoon feed the information to them. They absolutely detest when they are told to open a book or "RTFM". I'm not going to spell it out, you know what that means.
And that frustrates the older Hams who either studied the traditional way, or those who have gone the newer route, but graduated from the "School of Hard Knocks" by taking the time to do a little research on their own before asking for help. So when someone asks a basic, simple question that every Ham worth his/her salt should know the answer to, and they get told where to go to get the answer (without actually being given the answer they are looking for) they are label that person as a "Sad Ham".
Sadly, this is the way things are. To somehow mitigate it, older Hams need to be more inclined to do a little more friendly and non-confrontational and patient Elmering. In turn, newer Hams need to be more willing to show some respect to the veterans who have been in the trenches for a longer period of time, and not chafe when they aren't treated with the kid gloves they seem to expect and demand. If we don't learn to live with each other, it's going to be a lose-lose situation.
Enough of my kvetching - let's end this post on a high note with a really cool photograph. Brian Foltz WQ0A posted this to Facebook after completing his first CW QSO! Congratulations, Brian and thanks for posting the awesome photo!
Who doesn't love a nice set of paddles? And the lighting and composition are superb!
Something that John K3WWP has been touching on in his diary entries lately and it got me thinking as well. Bob W3BBO and I also touch on this during our weekly BS sessions.
Whither the rag chew?
If my memory is accurate, back in 1979, when I was a Novice, just about all my QSOs were rag chews, band conditions permitting. You'd meet someone new, or a friend, on the air and there were certain things you relayed. You always gave a brief description of your equipment and antenna, of course. From there you might get into a discussion about the weather or whatever. But they were conversations! And especially with DX contacts you might get a photo of something or other along with your QSL card to see how the fellow at the other end of the QSO lived.
My first award/certificate was for being a certified member of the RCC or Rag Chewer's Club. It was available through the ARRL and again, if I remember correctly, you earned it by submitting a QSL from a QSO that lasted 1/2 hour or longer. There were plenty of those, they were a dime a dozen.
I look at my log book these days, and I have plenty of Sprint QSOs, POTA QSOs, and a smattering of other contest QSOs like CQ WW DX and ARRL DX - but not many rag chews.
Why is that? It's a paradox. We're communicating more, but at the same time we're communicating less. I listen to the POTA guys who check into Marv K2VHW's "Middlesex County Chat Group Net" every night and they'll tell the tale how they made XXX number of QSOs that day. A nice achievement to be sure, but are they (myself included) communicating anything? Usually it's something like "W2LJ TU UR 559 BK", and of course, my reply is not much more - so let's move on to the next contact, please.
In the days of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other social media, we Hams pride ourselves as having been "the first social media", but it seems we aren't so social, anymore. Now granted, since I hardly ever pick up a microphone, it's probably a very different story on the phone side of things, but on the CW side, rag chews seem to be going the way of the Dodo.
So I am going to make a pledge. In my meager on-the-air time, I am going to try and have at least one or two rag chews per week. I doubt that will change anything, but as Confucius once said, "Every journey of a thousand miles begins with one step".
I posted a link to the "Such is the way of life" post immediately below this one to the South Plainfield Amateur Radio Club Facebook page. Drew was a member and I thought the members would like to know that his call sign was re-assigned.
Facebook informed me that my post was removed because it violated "Community Standards" and was deemed to be spam.
At the other club that I belong to, the Electronic Testing Society of New Jersey, we set up a memorial scholarship fund in Drew's memory. I guess we can't call it the W2OU Fund anymore. I was going to post the blog link there as well, but I guess that would have been removed, too. Besides, two instances probably would have gotten me banned from Facebook, at least temporarily if not permanently.
WTH, Facebook? Do you guys actually read this stuff; or is it just bots looking for stuff they don't even understand?
Feeling annoyed - I could use another term, but I'll choose to watch my language.
The Right and the Left both think someone would have to be SO STUPID to think the way the other side thinks. OK, let’s set that thought aside for a moment. We’ll come back to this.
There’s this guy I was following and often interacting with on Twitter. Seems like a really nice dude, posted about woodworking, retweeted funny memes about the Former Criminal In Chief, etc. We were aligned in a lot of ways. If he lived within 3 houses of me, he’d probably be the one neighbor I’d actually spend some time chatting with. Maybe even help him with a woodworking project, or vice-versa. Possibly even go fishing together.
Then, yesterday, he posted an obvious-tongue-in-cheek admonition about people who choose to back into parking spots. Had to wait a moment for someone to back into a spot. Made a funny little dig. It’s fine. This is fine. But then the replies… oh my god, the replies.
ALL THE IDIOTS noticed that someone had popped the bung out of the bunghole, and came gushing out of the barrel to pile on. Not with anything clever or amusing – no – just to say how much they hate “backer-inners“.
None of these people also complain about waiting for someone to back OUT of a parking spot. No, of course not. They probably stop, wave the backer-outer out, possibly even flash their headlights to let the person know “I see you, come on out.”
Look, ya twits, it’s approximately the same amount of waiting whether the other person is backing IN, or backing OUT. Either way, you’ve sometimes had to wait. But because someone does it not in your preferred way, you’re pissed off, and making moral judgements?!
Well let me clue you in on a little something. IT IS DEMONSTRABLY SAFER to back into a parking spot than it is to back out. Here’s why: Your vehicle (and your head) isn’t designed for greatest visibility backing up. You’ve got blind spots anyway, but they’re much worse behind. So, when is it that you can see the MOST things around the vehicle, MORE about the situation, and BEST determine that it’s safe to proceed backing up?
a. While you’re out in the parking lot aisle, with no vehicles within a few feet of your side windows? or b. While you’re in a parking spot, with enormous black-tinted-windowed SUVs on either side of you?
Basically, what you’ve come right out and admitted publicly is that you hate people because they’re smarter than you, wiser than you, more skilled/experienced than you, or some combination of those three. Now – take a step back – isn’t this exactly how we wound up with #IQ45 and a horribly RWNJ-stacked SCOTUS? Because all the stupidest people came pouring out the ol’ bunghole, all excited for their long-awaited chance to be part of a mob of people shouting gleefully about how fucking stupid they are? Finally, someone appreciates them for their ignorance – they could vote for someone who is stupid “just like me are”?
So yeah… I blocked a bunch of those folks who replied negatively about backer-inners. After a while, I also blocked the nice guy who posted the original tweet.
Yeah, I despise all and block most on the Right. I reluctantly tolerate and endure dumb people from anywhere on the socio-political spectrum. Half of the people are of below-average intelligence, after all, and it should be noted that “wise” and “smart” do not always correlate. But HOLY SHIT, I will not tolerate for a minute those who are stubbornly ignorant, proud of it, and hate anyone smarter than them. Whence come all the most wretched ills of the modern age.
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