On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 11:08:22AM +0100, Per Jessen wrote: > I am a licensed radio-amateur - haven't been active for a while, but - the > costs involved in either buying ready-built equipment or buying the equipment > necessary to build your own were not something to be ignored. > I bought a 2nd hand HP scope 2 or 3 years ago - not the top of the line, > ended up paying EUR2000. And then think of prices for eg. spectrum-analysers or > digital signal analysers. They don't come cheap. > Putting up a tower-mast for a short-wave arial is not cheap either. Etc. etc. > PCB design software like Protel will cost you USD5000 or so - and they don't > have a hobbyist license either :-(
All of that is true, but you don't need the expensive stuff either to homebrew or get on the air with a commercial radio. I've never spent more than $750 on a radio, or other piece of non-computer electronics. It's possible to get on the air with a US$100 used HW-101. (I'm K5ZC.) > So, although I *totally* agree with all of the arguments why IBM should make eg. > OS390 available on a hobbyist basis (and not at $13K), doing other things > on a hobbyist basis are expensive too. With other things, though, it's possible to get in cheap at the low end. There is no corresponding way to get in cheap here.
