MAN HOSPITALIZED WITH ANXIETY OVER HAM RADIO Southland County Morning News
Southland -- A ham radio enthusiast was admitted to County Hospital today suffering from anxiety over what he perceived as serious problems with his new radio, authorities reported Tuesday. Irv Stumpo, 55, of East Pharsalia, checked into the emergency room "in distress," according to the nurse on watch just before midnight Tuesday. "He was perspiring profusely and moaning over and over, 'My K-3 is no good, no good'," said Paula Stevens, a nurse at County. "He had enormous headphones clamped tightly on his head which we had a ton of difficulty removing, and he was also wearing ear buds," she said. "Isn't that strange? He was half incoherent but kept mumbling something about dynamic range and audio artifacts. I have no idea what that means." Randy LaHood, a fifteen year emergency room veteran, said that during an examination Mr. Stumpo went into considerable technical detail about a radio he had recently purchased from Elecraft, a company that makes high-end ham radios. "He began by explaining that his radio had 'noisy receiver' and 'mushy signals'," explained Dr. LaHood. "From what I could gather, he had just spent a lot of money on a radio and hadn't actually noticed any of these problems himself, but others in a internet group kept putting the ideas into his head," he said. Over a course of weeks, Stumpo became distraught over various imperfections in what Dr. LaHood said was a classic case of the power of suggestion. The hospital records also said that Stumpo drew mathematical figures he labeled "AGC slope", and filled four pages by writing "AGC off", "Ear Isolation" and "K3" repeatedly. Hospital officials could not explain the cryptic scribblings. Dr. LaHood said that Stumpo repeated the phrase "mushy AGC" for at least four hours while he waited for treatment. Other patients who were in the waiting room at the time moved to the other side of the room for fear he might endanger them. J. B. Archer was one of those in the waiting room at the time who had brought in his twelve-year-old son with a basketball injury. "Good ol' boy was pretty upset, I just told him it would be alright, but he wouldn't let up with 'I can't pick out the pileups'. I thought he had been involved in a big accident on the highway. Then he said other things like 'the impedance of my headphones' and 'ride the R. F. gain'. Then he started with 'diversity problem' and I thought maybe he was having trouble with racial relations. He was in terrible shape, I'll tell you that." Rick Culver, president of a local ham radio club, told the Morning News in a telephone interview, "A lot of these guys spend five or ten thousand dollars on a radio they think is going to be absolutely perfect in every conceiveable way. When it's not, they go into a panic buying lots of other accessories which promise to fix the issue they think they're having. This is followed by a deep buyer's remorse." He went on to recount a recent case which epitomized this effect. "We had one guy who had a radio that put out 95 watts instead of 100. He went berserk and ended up smashing his radio with a baseball bat. Not everyone gets that violent, but he never would have worried about it if it hadn't been for an internet forum that drummed it into his head twenty four seven that his radio was broken." Hospital officials said that Stumpo was treated with sedatives and is being kept for observation. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
