Rothammels Antenna Book ...

[Gareth's was W7 now W10 Downst]

... has been translated into English, and my copy, all 1600 pges of it has just arrived after being highly recommended on the GQRP Yahoo discussion group.

What a mine of information!

Apparently everything that you'll ever need or want to know about antennae for amateur service, but probably way over the head of anyone who came in through the route of the Fools' (AKA Foundation) Licence as it very quickly summarises Maxwell's Equations and the Poynting Vector.

Will separate the men from the boys, especially showing up any who confuse their sideband and their sidetone.

(What a mistake has been the dumbing down of the educational standards to get licences, so flooding the bands with those who are indistinguishable from CBers in their being only operators and completely technically ignorant!)

Amateur Radio is not a bums-on-seats game.

[Roger Hayter]

Whatever the demerits of the current progessive licence scheme, I don't think the level of technical knowledge or maths in the RAE was ever particularly high. There was really no golden age.

[Gareth's was W7 now W10 Downst]

I've never used the term golden age, but the addendum to the RSGB handbook in 1941 had mathematics up to what was the GCE standard of, say 50 years ago.

[Roger Hayter]

That's not the RAE. There are certainly amateurs of all ages currently who share your advanced level of mathematical ability, and there always were. But equally you could pass the RAE and become an excellent and popullar radio amateur fifty years ago while not knowing a great about technical matters. Amateur radio has always attracted a broad spectrum of interests.

[Gareth's was W7 now W10 Downst]

Untrue, dangerously so.

Amateur radio has always been a technical pursuit; the operator's hobby is CB Radio, and on the amateur bands are a large number of CBers masquerading as radio amateurs.

[Roger Hayter]

That is no doubt what you would like to be true, and I have a lot of sympathy with that aspiration. But it is not in fact true, and there were always, at least since the 1960s which is what I know about, a large number of amateurs interested in operating (and often highly skilled and knowledgable about it) and not particularly interested in anything technical. Equally, a lot copied circuits without being much interested in the theory. So I simply do not agree with you about the facts, as opposed to preferences.

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

I do very little selective operating and I am not interested in electronics or computing so where does that leave me ? ....

[Roger Hayter]

It leaves you making your own choices, which are really no-one else's business; but it does make some of your criiitcisms of others looking a shade hypocritical, though.

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

I would like to know what criticisms you mean.....please share I won't get annoyed .....honest

[Roger Hayter]

FL too easy? People not doing morse?

[Stephen Cole]

Don?t forget Jim?s endless moaning about people reporting his stalking to the police, but then he went and stitched up Paul with those recordings. What a snitching hypocrite.

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

feeble